Vote against the trade deal with China, and we will hold it against you when writing campaign checks. Phil Condit, chairman of Boeing Co., and Robert N. Burt, chairman and chief executive of FMC Corp., said a coming vote to facilitate China's entry into the World Trade Organization will be a measure of every lawmaker's friendliness to business.
Free trade is certainly one element that goes into that.
With trade agreements under attack from environmentalists, human-rights activists, religious groups, labor unions and others, businesses are lining up their protrade forces. A critical test of their success will be their ability to win congressional approval of permanent normal trading relations with China, part of the China-WTO agreement the administration hammered out with Beijing last year. The vote hasn't been scheduled yet. Members of the Business Roundtable, a group of senior executives of large companies, held a strategy breakfast with Treasury Secretary Lawrence Summers, Commerce Secretary William Daley and White House economic adviser Gene Sperling, then talked with U.S. Trade Representative Charlene Barshefsky. Later some 15 executives fanned out on Capitol Hill to press their case with more than a dozen lawmakers.