Trade Bill Vetoed; House Overrides : Senate Delays Action; Reagan Objects to Advance Notice on Plant Closings

WASHINGTON — President Reagan, criticizing a provision that would guarantee workers advance notice of plant closings and layoffs, vetoed the omnibus trade bill Tuesday, and within four hours the Democratic-controlled House overrode the action, 308 to 113.

The fate of the massive bill now lies in the Senate, where Republicans are confident they have more than the votes they need to uphold the veto. The Senate’s original vote in favor of the bill was 63 to 36, three votes short of the two-thirds majority that will be needed to make the bill law over Reagan’s veto.

Senate leaders delayed the override vote until after the Senate returns June 6 from its Memorial Day recess.

Mum on Main Provisions

In his message explaining his action, Reagan said little about the bill’s main provisions to tighten procedures for retaliating against trading practices by other nations that are found to be unfair.

Instead, he concentrated on the provision requiring companies with more than 100 employees to give 60 days’ notice of plant closings and major layoffs.

Democrats promptly injected the issue into the presidential election campaign. Massachusetts Gov. Michael S. Dukakis, the all-but-certain Democratic presidential nominee, told reporters that “to veto this bill because it will give people and their families 60 days’ notice before they’re laid off seems to me to be unconscionable.”

Reagan, aware that the plant-closing issue would be turned against him, also listed other objectionable features, including a limit on Alaska oil exports and provisions calling for official study commissions on industrial competitiveness and Third World debt.

He also mentioned two provisions that never before had been raised as major problems.

One, unpopular in farm states, would allow expanded ethanol imports from Caribbean sugar-producing countries--even though that provision is in harmony with the Administration’s own Caribbean Basin Initiative. The other would reduce executive authority to label foreign-made films, tapes and recordings with a political content as “propaganda.”

In addition to these provisions, the bill would impose a 0.15% import fee to provide job training for those left jobless in industries beset by import competition. And it would repeal the windfall profits tax on oil companies.

Reagan soft-pedaled earlier Administration objections to provisions of the bill that many Republicans and some economists had decried as protectionist. Instead, he asserted his desire to sign a trade bill this year and called on Congress to pass a second bill without the objectionable features.

Comment by Fitzwater

White House spokesman Marlin Fitzwater said that Reagan “probably” would sign a bill if only the plant-closing and Alaska oil provisions were excised. House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Dan Rostenkowski (D-Ill.), chief House architect of the bill, told reporters that he is “convinced” Reagan would sign a bill stripped of only those provisions.

But Sen. Howard M. Metzenbaum (D-Ohio), the strongest Senate supporter of the plant-closing provision, has threatened to filibuster and almost certainly kill any new trade bill that does not contain the plant-closing provision.

In his veto message, Reagan approached the plant-closing issue in gingerly fashion, describing it as a well-meaning gesture that would in practice reduce employment, just as he said similar legislation in Europe has dampened hiring and business formation.

“I support voluntarily giving workers and communities as much advance warning as possible before a layoff or a closing becomes necessary,” Reagan added.

Tries to Hedge

However much Reagan tried to hedge his message, Democrats saw in it a golden opportunity to woo back blue-collar voters who have supported Reagan in the last two presidential elections.

Rep. Thomas J. Downey (D-N.Y.), referring to the Administration’s effort to force Panamanian strongman Manuel A. Noriega from power in return for dropping drug-trafficking charges against him in Florida, told Reagan from the House floor: “You are giving Noriega six months’ notice. Why won’t you give the American worker 60 days?”

Former Democratic candidate Richard A. Gephardt (D-Mo.), whose provision to punish nations with trade surpluses with the United States had been stripped from the trade bill earlier, charged that the provisions singled out in Reagan’s message are “a lame excuse. He doesn’t want any trade legislation whatsoever. This Administration simply doesn’t care about trade.”

House Speaker Jim Wright (D-Tex.) signaled his willingness to go along with a substitute bill if the Senate sustains the veto. “I don’t know if it’s possible or not possible to get another bill this year,” Wright said.

Welcomes Campaign Issue

Rostenkowski, while welcoming the campaign issue that he said Reagan had handed the Democrats with his stand on the plant-closing provision, also urged Congress to move quickly toward a new trade bill without it. He expressed confidence that Congress still has time to act this year.

Then, in a pointed message to Dukakis, he added: “The next President, if he wanted, could make plant closing the first thing on his agenda next year” as a separate bill.

Earlier Tuesday, after a White House meeting, Senate Majority Leader Robert C. Byrd (D-W.Va.) conceded that the Senate probably could not make the bill law over Reagan’s veto.

‘We’ll Take It’

Senate Minority Leader Bob Dole (R-Kan.) agreed and added that enough time remains to pass a trade bill without the provisions Reagan opposes. “If the House sends us a trade bill and says take it or leave it,” he said, “I think we’ll take it.”

In the House, 248 Democrats and 60 Republicans voted to override the veto, and only one Democrat and 112 Republicans voted to sustain it. In the California delegation, only Rep. Wally Herger (R-Yuba City), who voted to override the veto, broke party ranks.