Any questions for the panelists?

ASSISTANT U.S. TRADE REPRESENTATIVE MURPHY: First, I have to thank Mr. Schuler for not engaging in any personal attacks this morning, since he and I have been working on this issue for a few years. I appreciated his indulgence.

It's clear we're hearing from a number of crops which are fairly small in the larger scheme of things, but which have enormous obstacles facing you. And the one we seem to be hearing most of here are the EU subsidies as well as access to their markets.

And I think it's very useful for us to hear that and clearly it's something we're going to have to focus on more in this coming round. And I think it would be useful, I guess in the case of canned peaches, we're pretty well tuned in to exactly the numbers and the problem. In case of others, we would invite you to give us further advice in terms of more precisely what do you -- what will you need. This information not being important for the Seattle Communique, which is going to be on a fairly high order of generality.

But as we move into the negotiations themselves starting at the turn of the year, it will be very useful for us to have very specific information of what sort of tariff reductions you need to be successful. That's of course the substance of the negotiations. So it would be good for us to have very precise numbers that are meaningful that we can achieve.

And of course on the olive side, we hear very clearly your problems here. And we will, I think, want to get together with you a little more on specific details as well. But your point that we should not reduce tariffs until something is done, I think is a very good one and we take that to heart.

Thank you.

ACTING MODERATOR VILLARREAL: Ambassador.

AMBASSADOR BAAS: I guess a brief question of the olive growers. As I understand your problem, well, your problem is Spanish subsidies, clearly. And I understand that that's principally a problem in the U.S. market. Is it also a problem in export markets, or to put it another way, if the playing field was level, if the Spanish were not receiving the subsidies that they are receiving, would you be able to compete with them in the U.S. market, would you be able to compete with them in a third market?

MR. AVINELIS: Currently a hundred percent of the olives processed are consumed domestically from our industry. We are taking major steps to gain those factors of efficiency, both from the grower's side and from the processor's side. The processors have spent untold millions of dollars to gear up for the environmental restraints, to improve food safety and to become more efficient from their end of things.

We, as growers, have also put huge amounts of research dollars into the number one issue, the cost of harvesting. Olives have been hand harvested. We're currently in the process of the development of a mechanical olive harvester. Both myself and one other grower have put large sums of personal funds into it, along with research funds from the COC.

So we're taking these steps to gear up to become efficient and compete on a worldwide basis, very similar to what had happened in the scenario with Harley-Davidson and the step that they took. And they are very proud to be very competitive in this world today. And we plan to do the same thing in the olive industry and that's what our focus is and where we're headed.

MR. HESTER: Well, I would just second what Tom has said. There's certainly no question the growers are doing whatever they can to be become more efficient and be able to produce from a much lower cost standpoint. But unfortunately, as long as there are tariffs or some kind of duties, whether public or hidden, are in place, it's difficult for California to play the same game.

Another issue that I didn't mention that gives us trouble is the USAID program, which has gone offshore and spent a lot of money developing industries, particularly in Morocco, where they spent millions to develop the infrastructure and put together, you know, a game plan that mainlined those olives into the United States, you know, thanks to our tax dollars.

USDA DEPUTY SECRETARY ROMINGER: Jim, I'd like to add that you're not the only one that Ron Schuler beats on.

We're here because we needed to hear the messages of specialty crops. That's something that, as Jim said, we need to make sure it gets more attention in this round than perhaps it did in the Uruguay Round. At least the outcomes in the Uruguay Round were not what we had hoped for. So we've got our work cut out for us there. We continue to work to try and improve situations with NAFTA as well.

But the way we do that is through another round of trade negotiations, so we need to keep working on it. But we want to keep in close touch with you, as my compadres have said here. As we go through the negotiations, we need that kind of detailed information on domestic subsidies that are being paid in the EU, as well as the tariffs that we're up against. So make sure that you keep feeding us that information.

Thanks.