Farm Journal | January 11, 2002 | By Sonja Hillgren
Three months after Sept. 11, 2001, our modern date of infamy, a remarkable 92% of Americans backed the war against terrorism. An overwhelming majority of us are proud of U.S. might and leadership in battling terrorists and liberating Afghanistan.
President Bush repeatedly gives us forthright doses of reality, that the war will be long and that lives will be lost. And 86% of Americans support the President, according to a USA Today/CNN/Gallup poll conducted in mid-December.
The poll was conducted shortly after Bush carved out the slimmest 215-214 House vote granting him authority to negotiate international trade agreements. His popularity didn't translate to trade.
The narrow trade win should not be discounted. After all, the House refused to give President Clinton trade negotiating authority in 1997 and 1998.
The vote this time was partisan; only 21 Democrats supported Bush and 23 Republicans opposed him. The Senate is expected to approve trade negotiating authority this year.
American grass-roots skepticism about trade shows that our national dialogue requires serious readjustment. Despite our trade deficit, trade is as necessary for U.S. leadership and economic success as military might. The United States is the largest trading nation in the world in both goods and services. And U.S. agriculture is 2 1/2 times more reliant on trade than the overall economy.
"U.S. leadership matters," Bush told the Farm Journal Forum on Nov. 28. "We recently helped bring China into the World Trade Organization, and that is good for American farmers. ... We helped start a new world trade round in Doha."
Farm influence. More than 100 commodity and agricultural groups and 10 former secretaries of agriculture helped eke out the narrow House vote on trade. That support cannot be taken for granted, however. A new national dialogue also requires agriculture to take a fresh look at the importance of trade to U.S. farmers and ranchers.
Deficiencies in agriculture's trade stance hearken back to the 1970s, when a dramatic expansion of exports, at a time of a weak dollar and inflation, fueled high commodity prices. Too many politicians and economists cited trade as a bonanza that would bring sustained prosperity to agriculture.
Here we are, many setbacks and three decades later. A muscle-bound dollar too often prices U.S. food out of the market, and international competitors have caught up with us. We struggle for every foreign sale, commodity prices are weak, and we import more food than in the past.
U.S. Trade Representative Robert Zoellick told the Forum that the US. is party to only three of more than 130 free trade agreements around the world. Producers along the borders of Canada and Mexico face import challenges, even as agricultural exports to Canada and Mexico have doubled since we negotiated free trade with our neighbors.
Keep up the fight. Trade simply is not the bonanza once promised. But fighting to increase exports remains a central part of doing business.
As part of a new trade round, "we need to diversify well beyond the current pattern of export concentration, where over 60% of U.S. agricultural exports go to eight country markets," Agriculture Secretary Ann Veneman told the Forum.
However, in the midst of this challenging global economic environment, some supporters of trade promotion authority are in the inconsistent position of backing anti-trade farm legislation.
The farm bill pending before the Senate could exceed a $19.1 billion ceiling in annual trade-distorting payments agreed to by U.S. negotiators during the Uruguay Round. To keep that ceiling from being broached, the bill would require the Agriculture Secretary to cut farm payments. Warned Veneman, "This ad hoc approach creates a new uncertainty for producers--would they get the payments or would the payments have to be pared back?"
When lawmakers return to Washington this month, they should cast aside their political gamesmanship and craft a bipartisan farm bill that promotes trade.
Members of Congress and farm organizations have an obligation to be forthright about the need for coordinating farm and trade policies.
Straight talk has helped cement support for a long, costly war against terrorism. It could do wonders for a renewed strategy of U.S. leadership to reduce global trade barriers.Farm Journal:
