Senator Clinton is facing pressure to toughen her trade stance against China after one of her rivals for the Democratic presidential nomination, Senator Dodd of Connecticut, called for an immediate halt to all imports of Chinese toys and food products.

Mr. Dodd urged President Bush to implement the temporary embargo in the wake of a slew of highly publicized recalls of 12 million Chinese-made toys over lead paint and other concerns, as well as a federal warning that seafood from China may contain high levels of antibiotics.

“This is an issue of safety,” Mr. Dodd said while addressing a labor group in Iowa yesterday. “Parents should be confident that the toys they give their children have been inspected and are safe. … It’s not enough to simply talk about working for free trade agreements. We need leadership that will act to enforce fair trade.”

Another Democratic presidential candidate, John Edwards, also has been pressing for tougher action against China. In a letter to Mr. Bush yesterday, Mr. Edwards called for a “‘zero tolerance’ policy” against “the highest-risk imported children’s products.” The former senator from North Carolina said the federal government should impose mandatory independent testing, as manufacturers have been unable to ferret out all the problems.

The two leading contenders for the Democratic nomination, Mrs. Clinton and Senator Obama of Illinois, have offered more measured responses to the growing fears about Chinese imports. On Tuesday, Mrs. Clinton’s campaign reissued a letter she sent to the White House on August 2, asking Mr. Bush to nominate a permanent chairman of the Consumer Product Safety Commission. Mr. Obama followed yesterday with a similar missive decrying the lead paint problems. “This is a political issue that has some traction,” a professor of public affairs at the University of Maryland, Mac Destler, said. Mr. Dodd, whose presidential bid has no measurable support in many polls, was clearly seeking publicity by making the call for an embargo.

Still, it is rare for a sitting senator to call for a suspension of entire sectors of imports from a major trading partner such as China.

In 2006, imports of toys from China totaled $20.9 billion, while food imports were valued at $4.2 billion.

Mr. Destler said any ban on Chinese toys or food would prompt a vigorous response from China, though it is difficult to predict whether an embargo would trigger a full-scale trade war. “The Chinese would complain very loudly, but they would also do what they’re already trying to do, which is get a handle on the problem,” he said. “They would look for defects in American products and that’s how they would retaliate, I think.”

Mr. Dodd’s call for an embargo marries the increasing protectionism in Democratic Party circles with food and child safety concerns of particular interest to women.

The provocative move could be seen as a particular challenge to Mrs. Clinton because President Clinton was masterful at making political hay out of the worries so-called soccer moms harbored about the dangers children face from guns, smoking, violent television shows, and tainted food. Mrs. Clinton is already viewed warily by some union members and trade policy critics because of her and her husband’s support for trade pacts like the North American Freed Trade Agreement. If she fails to adopt the embargo call, it could reinforce those doubts.

Spokesmen for Mrs. Clinton’s campaign and her Senate office did not respond yesterday to requests for comment on Mr. Dodd’s embargo proposal or food safety generally. The White House also passed up an opportunity to comment on the suggested embargo.

A Louisiana author whose family gave up all Chinese imports for a year, Sara Bongiorni, said Mr. Dodd’s proposal was impractical. “That’s a pretty radical solution,” she said. “I’d say that’s an overreaction.”

Ms. Bongiorni, who wrote a book about her experiment, “A Year Without ‘Made in China,'” said avoiding Chinese-made toys meant substituting costly old-fashioned wooden toys made in America and Europe for cheaper plastic and electronic ones made in China.

“I can tell you from personal experience, you don’t have a lot of options for ordinary toys children want and play with,” she said. “We made some toys which did not impress our children. There was some shoddy manufacturing right here in our home.”