Bush and Pelosi Step Up Clash Over Trade Pact

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WASHINGTON — President Bush and the House speaker, Nancy Pelosi, intensified an increasingly personal fight over a stalled trade deal with Colombia on Monday, trading accusations over who was best protecting the interests of American workers.

Mr. Bush, still angry about Ms. Pelosi’s surprise decision to rescind a requirement that the House take up the trade deal within 60 days, called the action a snub to a strategic ally in South America. And Treasury Secretary Henry M. Paulson Jr. canceled a meeting with the speaker on other economic initiatives that had been scheduled for Monday.

“This free trade agreement is in our national interests, yet that bill is dead unless the speaker schedules a definite vote,” the president said. “And it’s not in our country’s interest that we stiff an ally like Colombia and that we don’t encourage our goods and services to be sold overseas.”

Ms. Pelosi fired back, hurriedly scheduling a rare Monday meeting with reporters to suggest that the president was putting his trade agenda ahead of Americans’ economic troubles while pursuing stale economic policy.

“For seven long years, the president’s failed economic plan has stiffed the American people,” Ms. Pelosi told reporters.

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