"We're building a Democratic trade policy," Representative Sander M. Levin of Michigan said. "There's no guarantee of success."

Almost nothing rouses as much passion, anger or history for the Democrats as the issue of trade.

Defining the rules of engagement in a fiercely competitive global marketplace, trade policy cuts to the heart of the Democrats' identity, how they view their party's past and envision its future. It can divide them along regional and economic lines - Midwest vs. Pacific Rim, manufacturing vs. agriculture, Main Street vs. Wall Street.

Nobody knows this better than Representative Sander M. Levin, chairman of the Ways and Means Subcommittee on Trade and a 24-year veteran of the House from the suburbs of Detroit.

Mr. Levin is one of the newly empowered Democratic leaders trying to find a trade policy that can unite their party and heal a painful rift between those who see a globalized economy as inevitable and good and those who see the cost under current policies, in lost jobs and unsettled lives, as simply too great.

President Bill Clinton sought to forge a new, protrade consensus in his party in the early 1990s, but it was always fragile, and it has come under growing strain in recent years.

Now, the issue poses one of the most important challenges for this new Democratic-led Congress - in some ways, as important to the soul of the Democratic Party as the struggle over the war in Iraq.

It may be leading Democrats to yet another confrontation with the Bush administration.

And the Ways and Means Committee, with sweeping jurisdiction over tariffs and trade for more than 200 years, is at the center of it.

"We're building a Democratic trade policy," Mr. Levin said, in one of several interviews this spring. "There's no guarantee of success."

Since the Democrats took control of the committee in January, the 75-year-old Mr. Levin has met with restless Democratic freshmen who helped their party regain the majority by promising to "do something" about the job losses caused by a globalized economy - and who now want to deliver.

He has also met with business delegations, like the group of fiber manufacturers who recently pleaded in his office not to be made "the sacrificial lamb," as one put it, in any trade agreement with South Korea.

Mr. Levin has delivered speeches and held hearings, trying to assure his party's left that he understands the upheaval that trade can cause - he is, after all, from a state where the auto industry has been buffeted, for years, by global competition - while assuring centrists that neither he nor his party are protectionists.

This spring, Mr. Levin and his committee chairman, Representative Charles B. Rangel of New York, unveiled "A New Trade Policy for America," a first effort at a grand compromise. It promises to use trade agreements to raise labor and environmental standards around the world, push open new markets for American goods and use new government programs to cushion the growing insecurity of American workers.

At the same time, Democratic leaders have engaged in talks with the Bush administration, which wants to win Congressional approval for several trade agreements now pending, including with Peru and Panama, and secure authority from Congress to negotiate more under special, fast-track procedures. In recent weeks, those talks have escalated, and Mr. Rangel has repeatedly voiced his eagerness to forge a bipartisan trade policy.

All of this is playing out under the nervous, suspicious gaze of an army of interest and constituent groups, particularly on the left, where many fear the committee will eventually bow to the powerful interests on the protrade side. Organized labor in particular has been voicing concern in recent days.

"Sandy Levin sits on a committee that has tremendous pressure on it from Wall Street," said Representative Marcy Kaptur, Democrat of Ohio and a longtime critic of American trade policy. "I hope he'll be able to stand up for Main Street, but I don't know."

Mr. Levin said fears that Democrats would give up on their core demands, for labor and environmental standards, were groundless. "If anyone thinks that after all this work, we're going to give it up, they're just wrong," he said.

The Ways and Means Committee has rarely been known as a hotbed of economic populism. Its new 24-member Democratic majority has a voting record significantly more protrade than the House Democratic caucus as a whole, concluded an analysis of 15 trade votes by I.M. Mac Destler, a professor of public policy at the University of Maryland and author of "American Trade Politics."

And Speaker Nancy Pelosi of California, many analysts say, is far friendlier to trade agreements than her immediate predecessor as Democratic leader, Richard A. Gephardt.

Still, Mr. Levin and his fellow Democrats face a political backlash on trade and globalization as intense as it has been in years, a point underscored by the freshman class of 2006. Across the industrial heartland and the Northeast, those freshman campaigned on a scathing critique of American trade policies. How could Americans compete against workers in developing countries, they asked, while maintaining decent wages, health benefits and pensions?

"It's an issue near and dear to our hearts, and one we feel we need to deliver change on," said Representative Betty Sutton, a Democrat from northeast Ohio.

Ms. Sutton and her fellow freshmen have no seat on the committee - members usually wait for years to get one - but they quickly served notice that they wanted to be consulted.

Mr. Levin, a man whose natural demeanor appears to be one of grave concern, is at the center of these complicated currents. Like many other Democrats, he argues that the old terms of the trade debate no longer apply, that it is a false choice to set up a clash between free trade and protectionism, internationalism and isolationism. Trade cannot be stopped, he says, but it cannot simply be left to the vagaries of a free market.

"You have to bring about an expansion of trade so it works better for many more people," he said. "Trickle-down isn't enough."

Elected in 1982, after serving in the State Legislature and the Carter administration,

Mr. Levin represents a traditionally Democratic district, largely based in Macomb County.

The main Democratic demand, at the moment, is that new trade agreements require countries to meet international labor standards on issues like child labor and the right of workers to organize, a provision fervently backed by the Democrats' longtime ally, organized labor. Officials say the latest sticking point is whether such provisions would make labor laws in the United States vulnerable to legal challenge, a concern raised by the administration and its allies.

Mr. Levin and Mr. Rangel are also calling for much more action to open foreign markets to American goods, to make trade "a two-way street," a sticking point for Mr. Levin in the administration's pending agreement with South Korea, a country he asserts has constructed an "iron curtain" against American autos.

For all the emotion, the politics of trade do not simply break down into the old stereotypes of labor-beholden Democrats vs. Republicans in thrall to big business. The economic base of a lawmaker's district is key. For example, Representative Jim McDermott, a senior member of Ways and Means, is a quintessential liberal, but he is also from Seattle, a city heavily dependent on trade.

Still, even an internationalist like Mr. McDermott believes many voters are "re-evaluating" the idea that "everybody wins with trade," a shift shared by some liberal economists who had supported the idea that more trade is inherently good.

"You can't stop globalization, I know that," he said one day this spring, while a delegation of Indian parliamentarians waited to see him. "So then the question is, What do you do to try and make it possible for there to be more winners in this deal?"

Democratic strategists want to respond to the new economic populism that helped elect many of the freshmen. But they also want to avoid alienating voters (and lawmakers) who are centrists and far more positive about trade. The leaders remember the bitterness of previous internal battles - notably, over the North American Free Trade Agreement in 1993, a wrenching vote that still makes many Democrats angry.

Against this backdrop, Mr. Levin and Mr. Rangel began shopping their trade proposal in March. A main provision would create an array of programs to help workers cope with the dislocations of a changing economy, like expanding education and training programs and strengthening the social safety net.

Labor officials said they were, in general, encouraged by the proposals. Ms. Kaptur was wary, noting that Mr. Rangel was from New York and Ms. Pelosi from San Francisco. Could they understand, she asked, how different a global economy looked from the industrial heartland?

And 71 House Democrats signed a letter two weeks ago praising the new proposals, but adding pointedly that it should be "a firm bottom line from which you build in your negotiations with the administration."

Mr. Rangel's negotiations with the administration have made many Democrats nervous. Representative Jim McCrery of Louisiana, the ranking Republican on Ways and Means, said his party was eager to work toward a bipartisan coalition.
"I really do think there's a way for us to strike a middle ground," Mr. McCrery said.

Mr. Destler, the Maryland professor, said the challenge for Democratic leaders was achieving a critical mass of Democratic support by winning enough from the administration to "credibly argue" that "they have brought about a significant shift in trade policy priorities."

Mr. Levin outlined a broader goal: to spread the benefits of globalization. And, perhaps, to heal an old wound in his party, and its industrial base. 

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