Kemp to Use USC Speech to Propose New Trade Pacts

In a ringing defense of open markets, 1996 Republican vice presidential nominee Jack Kemp will call for the elimination of trade barriers not only with South America but Asia and Africa in a speech scheduled for delivery today in Los Angeles.

Speaking to graduating students at USC, Kemp will urge Congress to provide President Clinton “fast-track” authority to bring more countries into the North American Free Trade Agreement, according to an advance text provided to The Times.

“We build global security by bringing a greater and greater portion of the world into the democratic zone of peace and prosperity--a goal that guided both [Harry S.] Truman Democrats and [Ronald] Reagan Republicans,” Kemp says in the text.

Since the campaign, Kemp has kept up an active speaking schedule and established a political action committee--which many see as signs of his interest in seeking the GOP’s presidential nomination three years from now.

Though many of his fellow Republicans were angry that Kemp did not adhere to the traditional running-mate role and aggressively criticize the Democratic ticket, he has run at or near the top of most surveys measuring early preferences among GOP voters for the party’s presidential nomination in 2000.

In his USC speech, Kemp will say that the United States should extend the NAFTA free trade zone--which now includes the United States, Mexico and Canada--first to countries such as “Chile, Argentina and Brazil” and after that construct “a NAFTA-like trade agreement with Africa and the Pacific Rim countries.”

At separate 1994 meetings in Miami and Indonesia, Clinton agreed to goals of establishing free trade zones across Central and South America by 2005 and Asia by 2020. But both of those processes have moved slowly, and Clinton has become entangled in a stalemate with Congress over extension of the special fast-track authority, which facilitates the negotiation of trade accords by limiting Congress’ authority to amend them.

In the address, Kemp also staunchly defends legal immigration. After he was selected as Bob Dole’s running mate last year, Kemp came under fire for seeming to reverse his earlier opposition to California’s Proposition 187, which cut off almost all public services to illegal immigrants. In the speech today, he will argue that the United States must “close the back door of illegal immigration . . . to keep open the golden door of legal immigration.”