With the exception of Sen. Jon Kyl of Arizona, who voted no, all Senate Republicans voted for the pact except Sen. John McCain of Arizona, who missed the vote to campaign for president but supported the agreement. The two independents split. Sen. Joe Lieberman of Connecticut supported it; Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont opposed it.
Among the Democratic senators running for president -- all of whom missed the vote to attend a debate in Iowa -- Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton of New York and Sen. Barack Obama of Illinois have supported the agreement, while Sen. Christopher J. Dodd of Connecticut and Sen. Joseph R. Biden Jr. of Delaware have opposed it. Former North Carolina Sen. John Edwards has also opposed it.
A number of Democrats who previously opposed trade agreements said they supported the Peru pact because they won concessions from the Bush administration to include provisions that will protect Peru's environment and the rights of its workers.
But Democrats opposed to the measure blamed trade for job losses in their states and spent more time during the debate assailing the 1994 North American Free Trade Agreement, the trade deficit and problems with Chinese-made goods than talking about the Peru trade agreement.
"Passing a trade agreement with Peru is not the change that Americans demanded last year," said Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio), who highlighted trade in his Senate campaign. "Why would we do another trade agreement when NAFTA didn't work?"
Opponents also expressed skepticism that the Bush administration would enforce the environmental and labor protection provisions. "The right words on paper are just not enough," Sen. Debbie Stabenow (D-Mich.) said.
But Sen. Max Baucus (D-Mont.), chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, called the Peru pact a "groundbreaking achievement" in the trade wars that includes "exactly what many of us in Congress and the labor and environmental movements have been seeking to include in trade agreements for decades."
Free-trade advocates said the Peru vote bolstered hopes of winning passage of trade agreements with Colombia, Panama and South Korea.
But Daniel Ikenson, associate director of the Cato Institute's Center for Trade Policy Studies, called the other agreements "long shots" in this Congress.
For example, Clinton and Obama, who supported the Peru deal, oppose the agreements with the other countries. Clinton has said she is concerned about the history of violence against trade unionists in Colombia.
--
richard.simon@latimes.com
