Kantor's Cant: The Hole in Our Trade Policy

Brash, hard-nosed, quick-tempered. When Los Angeles lawyer Mickey Kantor became U.S. trade representative in 1993, those adjectives fit him like a well-tailored suit. They were a sign that things would be different in the antebellum building that houses the trade representative's small staff. Bill Clinton had made trade a major issue in his 1992 presidential campaign, and the belief that other countries were getting the best of the United States ran deep in the new administration. Kantor, who had been Clinton's national campaign chair, was given the highly sensitive job of making sure America got a fair shake in world trade.

By most measures Kantor's tenure has been a resounding success. The Clinton administration has not produced a similar record of achievement in any other field, foreign or domestic. On Kantor's watch two major accords to reduce tariffs and trade barriers have come to fruition, the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) and the 112-nation pact creating the World Trade Organization (WTO). The Clinton-inspired Summit of the Americas in 1994 set a course for a future free trade pact covering the entire western hemisphere, and the administration helped persuade the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation forum to adopt free trade as its goal for the coming decade. In tense negotiations on a host of difficult bilateral issues, Kantor's confrontational tactics have wrung concessions from trading partners and earned Clinton political points at home.