Business First, Freedom Second

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Clinton seemed to gloss over such concerns last May when he decided that China should retain its most-favored-nation trading status despite its intransigence on human-rights issues. In Asia, apparently, the business of America is business. Tony Lake, the President's National Security Adviser, is euphoric about the future for U.S. trade to be fashioned by the meeting in Indonesia, by a congressional vote on the new 123-nation world-trade agreement scheduled for next month, and by a Western Hemisphere summit in Miami in December. Taken together, he says, they will "shape the economic architecture of the next century."

While designing this economic architecture, Clinton has promised, he will work with American business leaders on a voluntary set of principles for their activities in China and, by extension, other authoritarian states in Asia. Human-rights advocates thought they would hear the details before the President began this trip to Asia, but it did not happen. Human rights supporters and their sympathizers in the Administration, mostly at the State Department, have been pushed aside by the trade-first advocates. "Trade does take a priority," concedes one of the White House officials involved. "It is followed closely by support for democracy, followed by economic and political reform where possible, and then human rights."

To his credit, Clinton did not simply let his pledge about a code of business principles slip away. In June the White House called a meeting of interested groups and collected about 30 company codes for discussion. Bowman Cutter, the deputy head of the National Economic Council, who chaired the session, stressed that the principles were to be voluntary and developed from the bottom up, drawing on the best experience of businesses, and not by bureaucratic fiat.

After that, the effort stalled. Most business executives dislike codes in any form because they fear voluntary rules will later turn into legislation, as was the case with South Africa and the Sullivan Principles, which required U.S. firms operating there to ban apartheid in the workplace and provide a range of benefits for workers. Businessmen with interests in China asked why they were being singled out -- they were not violating anyone's rights -- and opposed "country specific" codes.

As Clinton's departure date for Indonesia approached, human-rights groups began pressing the White House for a major statement or the unveiling of a set of business principles. Commerce Secretary Ron Brown circulated the draft of a voluntary code to the chief executives of three major U.S. corporations -- Kodak, Chrysler and TRW -- for preliminary approval. Not only did those three balk, but several business groups lobbied the White House, arguing that a voluntary code would be only the first step toward regulation and also pointing out that the fuss could overshadow next month's congressional vote on the new trade pact negotiated under the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade. The result: the principles have been deferred, and Clinton will not preach a human-rights sermon in Bogor. As a sort of welcome present, Indonesian Manpower Minister Abdul Latief said last Friday that his government would overhaul and liberalize its labor laws.