When the House of Representatives approved permanent normal trading relations (PNTR) for the mainland on May 24, US businesses in Beijing broke open the champagne, believing that passage through the Senate would be a formality and the prize was in the bag.
A month later, the bill is trapped in procedural wrangling in the Senate, with no vote before the recess for Independence Day on July 4 and possibly none before a month-long recess in August. July contains just nine legislative days, because of the Independence Day holiday.
'There is growing concern in the US business community,' said the chief China representative of a US company.
'We had taken the Senate vote as given. It could be postponed to September, which is in the middle of the election campaign. If it were not passed before the election, that would raise the possibility that we would have to go through the process again and go to the House a second time. People are nervous.' Another blow was the decision by Commerce Secretary William Daley earlier this month to leave the government and head the election campaign of Vice-President Al Gore. Mr Daley had led the campaign by the White House to get the bill passed by Congress and his personal lobbying was a key reason it passed the House of Representatives.
Robert Kapp, president of the US-China Business Council, the principal organisation of American firms engaged in trade and investment with the mainland, said time was not on the side of PNTR.
'If the vote is postponed into September, the political calculations change and things become more complicated. There is an outside possibility of no vote this year. The next issue is that, if the Senate version of the bill differs by one comma from the House version, then the two versions have to be reconciled by members of both houses and the agreed one passed by both. We do not want to see a second vote in the House of Representatives. It was a Titanic battle to pass it the first time.' The frustration for US business is that a majority of senators support the House version and are willing to pass it unchanged - but it is being held up by issues that have nothing to do with PNTR.
Republican Trent Lott, Senate majority leader, who has the power to decide the date of a vote, refuses to do so and says lawmakers must first complete work on bills on government spending. He has also said that he may allow amendments to the bill, which are likely from its opponents, such as Jesse Helms, one of the strongest critics of the mainland in Congress.
