The Chicago Tribune - February 22, 2001
Naftali Bendavid, Washington Bureau

One month into his presidency, Bush appears more reluctant to reverse some of the edicts than many supporters had hoped.

That has been dramatized in recent days with a low-profile announcement that the administration would not overturn a policy allowing easier access to AIDS drugs overseas, and with the suggestion that it will not roll back new curbs on development in large wilderness areas.

Virtually all of Clinton's actions had politically influential coalitions behind them, from environmentalists to labor unions to minority groups. In each case, the Bush team has to decide whether it is worth the fight to undo Clinton's actions, said James Thurber, director of the Center for Congressional and Presidential Studies at American University.

"Bush has to calculate what the coalitions look like around a particular issue," Thurber said. "There are very strong groups that push these issues one way or another."

Clinton faced a hostile Republican Congress for most of his presidency and he often relied on executive orders and other presidential powers to accomplish what he could not achieve through legislation. Even before taking office, Bush created a high-level team to examine Clinton's last-minute executive orders and determine whether they could be reversed.

Bush has overturned several Clinton edicts, for example a policy that sent federal funds to groups that provide abortion counseling overseas. Bush also reversed several Clinton executive orders that favored unions, to the delight of the business community.

But in other areas conservatives may be disappointed. Some, for example, expected Bush to reverse a Clinton policy designed to allow residents of less-industrialized nations, notably Africans, to buy AIDS drugs more cheaply. But this week, the office of U.S. Trade Representative Robert Zoellick issued a statement saying no such change was in the works.

The issue arose several years ago when poorer countries, frustrated at the high cost of AIDS drugs, began disregarding international patents and taking steps to get medicines more cheaply to their AIDS-ravaged populations. Some pharmaceutical-makers complained that their intellectual property rights were being ignored.

South Africa, for example, decided in 1997 to buy drugs from countries where they are sold more cheaply and import them, without the permission of the manufacturers. The country also chose to adopt "compulsory licensing," forcing drugmakers to license other companies to make their medicines inexpensively.

The South African "Medicines Act" is tied up in South African courts and has not taken effect. But in December 1999, the Clinton administration essentially sided with South Africa and other countries, declaring that if a nation is facing a health crisis the United States would not seek sanctions against it for patent violations.

That is the policy the Bush administration now says it will not reverse.

"The HIV/AIDS crisis is a terrible tragedy for countries, families and individuals," the office of the U.S. Trade Representative said in a statement. "USTR is not considering a change in the present flexible policy."

Winnie Stachelberg, political director of the Human Rights Campaign Fund, a gay and lesbian rights group, said the action was an important victory but suggested it would have been hard for the administration to make any other decision.

"The magnitude of this epidemic cannot be lost on anyone," Stachelberg said. "I don't see how anyone could ignore the devastation that this epidemic is exacting, and will continue to exact, on the world. The fact that this administration recognizes it is very, very important."

Jeff Trewhitt, a spokesman for Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America, said the group will continue to monitor Bush policies on the issue.

"We think it is an excessive formalization" of the existing policy, Trewhitt said. "However, we don't necessarily think that the underlying principle behind the action is negative." That's because it keeps the trade representative's office involved in global health issues, Trewhitt explained.

It is not immediately clear how many countries the Bush administration's decision will affect. Some that have been looking for ways around AIDS drug patents, like Thailand, have negotiated deals with drugmakers allowing them to buy medicines at a lower price.

The United States is also embroiled in a high-profile dispute with Brazil over AIDS drugs. Brazilians say the U.S. is trying to block one of its laws that would allow easier access to medications. The U.S. insists the Brazilian law is much broader and would let Brazil avoid patent restrictions on a wide array of products.

Stachelberg said it is too early to gauge the impact. "So much of it depends on the home countries' policies and their laws," Stachelberg said. "What is important is that the United States, as a leader in the world, has signaled that it wants to fight this epidemic with as many tools as possible, including this one."

If the Bush administration faced obstacles in overturning the AIDS policy, it confronted bigger challenges regarding Clinton's creation or expansion of 21 national monuments in his final months in office, limiting development on millions of acres of land, much in the West and in wilderness areas.

It would take an act of Congress to overrule Clinton's decision. The White House has apparently decided against waging what would undoubtedly be a tough fight in Congress against the environmental community.

In a Washington Post interview, Interior Secretary Gale Norton said she had heard no one within the administration urging a repeal of the monuments. Interior Department spokeswoman Stephanie Hanna confirmed that Wednesday.

"She intends to work with members of Congress, state governors and local officials on the monument designations, but had not heard any calls to repeal the monument designations," Hanna said.

That does not mean Norton was not concerned about the way Clinton made his decisions, Hanna said.

Norton did speak of redrawing the boundaries of the monuments and creating exemptions for some activities within them, such as mining.

Environmentalists, who bitterly fought Norton's nomination, are concerned that while the administration may not seek to repeal the monuments, it could undermine management methods.

"They could be monuments in name only and end up being just development parks," said Melanie Griffin, a spokeswoman for the Sierra Club.

"There is a real fear in Congress of undercutting environmental laws," Griffin added. "People lose elections when they attack environmental laws. So I think they see it will be easier for them to use back-door tactics to undercut environmental protections rather than coming through the front door of public participation and oversight."

Karen Batra, spokeswoman for the National Mining Association, said the boundaries and activities must reflect residents' desires.

"We have not advocated the rollback of any of these [monuments], but we agree that they need to be possibly amended to take into account the best interests of the people out there," Batra said. "We agree with Secretary Norton's views that the Clinton administration may have made these designations hastily, and the state and local officials and property owners should have had more opportunity to make comments before these designations were made."

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