That's why we have fought so hard to open more markets to more products than any other Administration in modern history. But today we are learning important lessons that we cannot afford to ignore. One is that what happens in the global economy has an impact here at home. Another is that what happens to agriculture is affected by what happens to other sectors of the world economy, like currency valuations, banking policy and consumer demand for all sorts of products. That is why support for the International Monetary Fund and other efforts to shore up the global economy are so vital to agriculture.
Strong exports require strong customers.
My visits to Malaysia, Korea and Japan really brought home for me the fact that agriculture purchases from the U.S. do not exist in a vacuum. We should not delude ourselves, however, in assuming that America's farmers and ranchers believe en masse that more open markets are necessarily good for them. Many continue to believe that the benefits of expanded trade are outweighed by recent balance of trade deficits, as well as particular problems existing between the U.S. and the European Union and the U.S. and Canada. Many times I hear academics and some in the agri-business community bemoan the fact that if farmers really understood the statistics, they wouldn't be so ambivalent about free trade. But the fact is that many farmers perceive that free trade is often not reciprocal or fair.