Washington ? The American worker, not corporate America, will be the central focus of U.S. trade policy as far as the new Democratic majority of Congress is concerned.

That’s no surprise, but it’s a big shift. Since World War II, U.S. trade policy has sought to open markets to American exports through free-trade deals with countries large and small. That’s made less expensive electronics, apparel and other foreign-made goods increasingly available to U.S. consumers.

But it’s also cost a growing number of American workers jobs, pay increases and pensions. Manufacturers left Rust Belt states such as Ohio and Pennsylvania for China, and garment makers in the Carolinas shuttered factories and moved to Asia or Central America, lured by lower wages, fewer regulations and nonexistent trade unions.

“In the age of globalization and outsourcing, and with a vast underground labor pool from illegal immigration, the average American worker is seeing a different life and a troubling future,” James Webb, the newly elected Democratic senator from Virginia, said in an opinion piece in Wednesday’s Wall Street Journal.

As a result, many Democrats and some Republicans are demanding that free-trade agreements be fairer to American workers and businesses.

Democrats aren’t going to abandon free-trade agreements, said New York Sen. Charles Schumer, who led the Democrats’ senatorial campaign this fall. Instead, they’ll demand that future agreements be “fairer and more in the interests of America as opposed to just American corporations.”

There are limits to what the Democrats can do for American workers, though. Labor and environmental agreements are easier to negotiate than they are to enforce, and global forces largely determine where companies locate, jobs are created and trade flows.

But there are some areas where U.S. policy can make a difference, and politics is about perception as much as reality.

So what will Democrats do? The incoming chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, Montana’s Max Baucus, told McClatchy Newspapers that he’ll seek to expand the safety net for American workers. He wants trade-adjustment assistance to include the services sector, where jobs have been lost to offshoring – the outsourcing of administrative, clerical, service and technology jobs overseas.

That would provide financial assistance to software designers, accountants, call-center operators and even architects who’ve lost their jobs to less expensive labor overseas.

Democrats also want the administration to invoke the provisions allowed under global trading rules to protect U.S. manufacturers from cheap imports and unfair competition. They want President Bush to bring a number of trade complaints against China to the World Trade Organization for keeping out U.S. exports.