At issue are commodities as varied as rice, apparel and automobiles, as well as lucrative new markets in banking and other financial services, with potentially billions of dollars in commerce at stake.
But for several countries negotiating trade pacts with the U.S., the outcome may have less to do with economics than with American election-year politics.
A last-minute push by the Bush administration to expand exports and strengthen alliances in Asia, Latin America and the Mideast could be derailed by the crowded congressional calendar and other political issues, trade experts say.
At stake are dealings with some of the United States' largest trade partners.
U.S. Trade Representative Susan C. Schwab just returned from Asia, where she pressed officials in Beijing to help restart global trade negotiations that were suspended last summer.
Trade officials from the U.S. are meeting with their South Korean counterparts in Seattle on Wednesday to work on a bilateral deal that would be the biggest of its kind since the North American Free Trade Agreement took effect in 1994. Among other provisions, the pact would ease barriers for American beef, rice and autos in South Korea, which conducted $72 billion in two-way trade with the U.S. last year.
But observers say time is running out for the Bush administration, which has already acknowledged that it is unrealistic to expect that a global trade deal will be completed before next summer. That's when the president loses the so-called trade promotion authority that allows his administration to negotiate complex pacts and put them before Congress for up-or-down votes without amendments.
Advocates of the deal with South Korea also are pushing to make that deadline. They say the U.S. needs to bolster its presence in the region, given the growing influence of China as well as North Korea's nuclear ambitions. Although the trade pact has strong support from U.S. industries such as banking, aircraft manufacturing and farming, officials in Seoul face fierce opposition from a powerful farm lobby that warns of an influx of cheap U.S. rice and other commodities.
"There just isn't enough time to bring home a U.S.-Korea free-trade agreement absent some dramatic, unforeseen breakthrough," said Daniel Griswold, director of the Center for Trade Policy Studies at the Cato Institute in Washington.
