PRESIDENT Clinton has appointed the US Trade Representative, Mr Mickey Kantor, as Secretary of Commerce in succession to the late Ron Brown, who was killed in a plane crash in Croatia on April 3rd.
The Republican leader, Senator Robert Dole, praised the appointment which does not require Senate confirmation.
Mr Kantor and Mr Brown, who were close friends, worked on Mr Clinton's 1992 election campaign; Mr Kantor as chairman and Mr Brown as head of the Democratic Party.
Mr Kantor is a Los Angeles lawyer. Like Mr Brown, he worked for US trade agreements with China and Japan, and supported continuation of the Most Favoured Nation Trade Agreement with the Peoples Republic of China.
As the US Trade Representative, Mr Kantor completed the negotiation of the North American Free Trade Agreement (Nafia) with Mexico which was opposed by a strong element of the Democratic Party, and the AFL-CIO, the US trade union federation.
He was criticised in Congress for the pact which it was feared would lead to the loss of jobs in the US.
US workers claimed that US factories lost jobs as a result of the agreement by shifting operations to the lower paying Mexican economy.
They charged that as a result of Nafta many US companies were sending parts and materials to Mexico for final assembly and those products were then imported into the US as American. This was denied and in general found to be incorrect.
Congressman Marcy Kaptur (Democrat, Ohio), told the House of Representatives: "When the Administration tells us that Nafta has benefited our country. I wonder if they have talked to the workers who are losing their jobs; there is no one keeping tabs on lost production in our country."
"The only people that really know are the farmers and the workers who are being thrown out of their jobs across the country," he said. "Wages have not been going up, benefits have not been going up, so what is going up is the hollowing out of production in manufacturing and agriculture in this nation."
Mr Kantor replied to all criticisms and in general managed to convince the public that Nalta was good for the United States as well as for Mexico.