Baldrige Calls Vetoed Bill to Curb Imports a ‘Job Loser’

WASHINGTON — Commerce Secretary Malcolm Baldrige, predicting a “very close” decision when the House attempts on Wednesday to override President Reagan’s veto of legislation imposing quotas on textile imports, said Sunday that the bill is an ill-timed “job loser” that would invite retaliation.

While the U.S. textile industry “has been through some very tough times,” the commerce secretary said on the CBS News program “Face the Nation,” conditions have improved over last year. Textile employment is up about 4%, he said, unemployment is down to 6.8% from 10.0% in 1985, production is up 11%, exports are up 14% and textile company profits are up 100%.

Baldrige said he hopes these statistics, coupled with awareness of “the retaliation we’re sure to get,” will be enough to block the override motion in the House. It has gathered impetus since Rep. Trent Lott (R-Miss.), the minority whip, began recruiting other Republicans from textile producing states to help build the two-thirds majority required to upset the veto.

Shoes and Copper

The bill includes provisions to aid U.S. producers of shoes and copper, but its main target is clothing imports from the “Big Three” textile producers--Hong Kong, South Korea and Taiwan--which would be cut about 30% below 1985 levels. Imports from nine other non-European nations, including Japan, China and the Philippines, would be held close to 1984 levels.

When asked about President Reagan’s decision last week to clear the way for the sale this year of up to 4 million metric tons of wheat to the Soviet Union at subsidized prices, Baldrige dissented from the views of Secretary of State George P. Shultz and Defense Secretary Caspar W. Weinberger that the sale will amount to a subsidy for the Soviet economy.

While such a subsidized sale to Moscow is “unpalatable for us,” Baldrige said, the alternative is to surrender the market to European nations that subsidize grain exports at world prices. He urged an agreement to “get rid of subsidies altogether.”

Meeting the Price

“We either have to get in there and meet that price and try to negotiate out subsidies with the Europeans, or we just lose sales for our farmers altogether,” Baldrige said.

When asked why the United States does not serve notice on European producers that it will match their subsidized sales as long as they continue, Baldrige said there had been “private talks with the Europeans about this,” but he refused to amplify. He conceded, however, that “it may be we’ll come to that.”

Appearing on the same program, Rep. Tony Coelho (D-Merced), chairman of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, and Rep. Guy Vander Jagt (R-Mich.), chairman of the National Republican Congressional Committee, agreed with Baldrige that Wednesday’s vote on the veto override will be close.

‘Terrible for Farmers’

Arguing against GOP defections, Vander Jagt said that an override would be “terrible for American farmers” because the bill would invite retaliation from nations that he said consume 40% of U.S. farm exports.

Coelho replied that he was not “really afraid of retaliation” because protectionism has taken over international farm markets and “we have to aggressively get out there and insist on fair trade policies.”

To Vander Jagt’s suggestion that the Democrats were pushing the bill because they are “in desperate shape going into the 1986 elections,” Coelho retorted that the $170-billion trade deficit now expected for this year will prevent any improvement in the economy.

Earlier, Baldrige had predicted that the trade deficit will begin to decline in the last quarter of this year.