Date: 1986-05-20
Speaker: DE LA GARZA (democrat)
Chamber: H

Mr. Chairman. I yield myself such time as I may consume. Mr. Chairman. when the House debates national trade policy. as we are doing today. one of the key elements in that discussion must be agricultural trade policy. That is true for two reasons: First. agricultural exports are crucial to the financial stability and future prosperity of our agricultural and food economy. And second. for many years. agricultural trade has been one of the few areas in which the United States has had a .positive balance of trade. The wheat. cotton. and other crops we sell abroad. in other words. help pay for many of the foreign prodpcts we import. In both of those areas. we have problems that must be addressed. As the House knows. the Nations farm economy is in trouble. and one major cause of that trouble is the fact that agricultural exports have declined sharply during the 1980s Exports have fallen from a record of $43.8 billion in fiscal 1981 to an estimated $28 billion for the current fiscal year. That represents a decline of more than 36 percent in that area. As far as the balance of trade is concerned. there is also cause for concern. In the 1981 fiscal year. our agricultur. al exports .ran ahead of agricultural imports by $26.6 billion. In fiscal 1986. however. the favorable balance of agricultural trade will be down to only about $7 billiona decline since 1981 of nearly 74 percent Our Committee on Agriculture. Mr. Chairman. addressed the issues related to agriculture and I would advise my colleagues that some of the areas that we adopted amendments and submitted for incorporation into this vehicle - were either deleted because of jurisdictional conflict with other committees. or were adopted by the other committees. specifically the Committee on Ways and Means and the Committee on Foreign Affairs in their section of this omnibus trade bill. What we have then that provides incentive. assistance and some degree of hope to our agricultural sector is giving more or additional tools. the basic tools that agriculture needed for competing in the world economy. I think. were well provided in the Farm Act of 1985. These are. then. additional tools that we would give the President and the various agencies to deal with some of the areas of concern related to agricultural trade. world trade. beyond the domestic utilization of the products that our farmers produce. The decline in our agricultural trade balance is bad news for our entire economy. When we lose exports. farmers lose income. but they are not the only people who suffer. Declining exports mean that surpluses go up and farmers are forced to reduce acreageand that affects the whole wide range of industries that produce farm supplies and handle farm commodities. Let me give you just one example. In the 1981 crop year. farmers used nearly 288 million acres for wheat. corn. sorghum. barley. soybeans. rice. and cotton. In the current year. under programs which we are using to cope with heavy surpluses. the acreage for those crops will be limited to only about 266 million acres. Our farm economy and our national economy would be much better off if farmers and the agribusiness industries had those idled acres back in production at prices that produced a fair return for the growers. We do not have a precise estimate of just how much net income American farmers have lost because of the decline in exports. But if you look at the USDA estimates of export sales in recent years. you will find some uncomportable numbers. Just suppose. for a moment. that export sales in recent years had remained at the fiscal 1981 level of $43.8 billion. In the 6 years ending in fiscal 1986. that would have brought nearly $263 billion from foreign buyers of our farm products. The actual amount we got in that period was just under $215 billion. And that means the American farm economy. over the past 6 years. has lost a cumulative total of nearly $48 billion in export sales. This problem is not new. The export depression was one of the major factors we considered in the House when we wrote the omnibus farm bill last year. That bill. as my colleagues recall. included a number of major new program and policy steps designed to help make us more competitive in world agricultural markets. Now. as part of H.R. 4800. the general trade bill which is before the House today. we have provisions which give us an opportunity to go further in dealing with agricultural trade issues. Title VI of the bill includes several proposals designed to make the programs adopted in 1985 work more effectively. In addition. we have included proposals that can make the Agriculture Department a tougher. better coordinated and more active agency for moving American products into world markets. Also. we have added several features designed to make sure that American growers get a fair chance to compete with imports in our own domestic market. And finally. we have brought you amendments which put Congress on record against the European Communitys recent steps to restrict American trade and which urge the President to take a strong stand against foreign discrimination against American beef and citrus products. Mr. Chairman. I will include in these remarks a brief summary of the Items included In title VI of the bill. Before doing so. however. I want to reemphasize the importance of trade to agriculture and to remind the House again how much damage is done when we lose agricultural exports. I will not go over the dismal figures on farm income and the number of farmers who have suffered so much in this worst .agricultural depression since the 1930s. But in addition to the record of suffering on the farm. there is a record of economic distress that is a direct result of the problem on the farm. I want the House to hear the following brief extract from a March 1985 report from the National Commission on Agricultural Trade and Export Policy: Capacity utilization in the pesticides manufacturing and potash industries has fallen by 33 percent and 22 percent since 1980. Soybean crushing plants are operating at 64 percent of capacity and grain trading firms at 50 percent. 1.200.000 less bushels of basic commodidites were loaded on barges on a weekly basis in 198485 than in 198082. Two thousand less railcars carried commodities on a weekly basis in 198485 than in 198081. The story is equally serious for other industries. Although other sectors of the general economy are experiencing growth. there has been no economic recovery In U.S. agriculture. That report is now a little more than a year old. But the basic problem it presents has not changed much. Mr. Chairman. I know there are some who say that we should not use programs which promote exports by programs such as the Export Bonus Program or the export credits we approved last year. I agree that in a ideal world. where all nations use fair trading policies. it would be better to do without such programs. But we do not live in a perfect world. The fact is that there is today little really free trade in agriculture. Governments all over the world use programs designed to protect farmers for a variety of reasonssometimes to help assure domestic food supplies. and sometimes to give their farmers an advantage in world markets. Our country has made repeated efforts over the years to improve the world trade climate and to eliminate unfair subsidies and trade barriers. I believe Congress and our farmers favor these efforts and want them to continue and to succeed. But until they do succeed. we cannot leave American farmers standing alone to compete against the treasuries of foreign governments. For all these reasons. we need to take every chance we get to improve our policies. programs and machinery for promoting agricultural exports and for moving toward fair trade conditions in both export and domestic markets. Here now is a summary of the steps in that direction taken by title VI of H.R. 4800.