The next speaker that will have some remarks for us today is U.S. Trade Ambassador Peter Scher. Peter, it's all yours.

AMBASSADOR SCHER: Secretary Judge, thank you very much. It is a pleasure to be here with you and Governor Vilsack and Secretary Glickman and other colleagues from the Administration. I'm particularly pleased to be here with Senator Grassley. Usually when I'm testifying for Senator Grassley, there's one of those little gadgets with the lights to tell me when to shut up. So now I guess if I talk too long, he can just scream out and tell me "enough". But I am pleased to be here with the Senator who, I think as all of you know, plays such an important role not only in agriculture but as the Chairman of the International Trade Subcommittee he plays a very significant role. Congressman Boswell is a member of the House Agriculture Committee. I also wanted to acknowledge some of the others that also play a very important role. Senator Harkin who is the ranking Democratic member of the U.S. Senate Agriculture Committee and has been an active voice on the issues on behalf of Iowa. This is a listening session, so I want to do something that people in Washington have a tough time doing, and that is be brief so we can spend most of our time hearing from you. But I would like to begin just with some brief remarks about the principles of our agricultural trade policy and the Administration's view of the next round of world trade negotiations which will begin later this year in Seattle, Washington.

To begin with, our trade priorities rest on a few basic principles; opportunity, fairness, and respect for science. First as all of you know, America's farmers are the world's most highly competitive, technically advanced in the world. And because of this, we produce far more than we can ever eat, and this means we have to create the opportunity to export to the 96 percent of the world's consumers who live outside our borders. As I was listening to CNN this morning in the hotel, they said there's going to be an event today in Washington to note the fact that in just three months there will be 6 billion people inhabiting the planet. I mean, this is a message that we have to hear because the world's population is growing and ours is not. So to survive, to prosper in the years ahead, we have to have access to the markets overseas. And agricultural producers and families depend not only on the trade agreements that Secretary Glickman and Ambassador Barshefsky and our teams work so hard to reach, but also on strict enforcement of those agreements. We have a notion in this country that when you make a deal, a deal is a deal. Not every country acts that way. So we have to spend a lot of our time ensuring the countries meet commitments. We have to spend a lot of time ensuring that exporters and consumers alike can have a science-based food inspection regime to ensure confidence in the food supply, to ensure that foreign countries are not using phony science as new trade barriers. And these have been some of the fundamental goals we have pursued over the last six years.

Most fundamental to those goals has been the establishment of the World Trade Organization. For the first time we created a set of international principles to ensure open markets and fairer treatment. I don't want to say "fair treatment". I want to say "fairer treatment" for American agriculture. This was 50 years in the making. Finally in 1994 the world agreed that agriculture, like all the other sectors of our economies, should be treated under the rules of the World Trade Organization. And this has helped us. It has raised incomes, it has created jobs, it has promoted American values overseas, and the results have been very good. We have been able to cut tax. We have been able to cut export subsidies. We have been able to open up new markets. We want consensus on health and food safety standards that those should be based on science and not on politics, and we have created new markets for our goods. At the same time, as Secretary Glickman mentioned, we have created a strong enforcement mechanism in the WTO to ensure that when countries are not meeting their obligations, we have a mechanism to address that.

The United States has been the most aggressive utilizer of this system. We have brought more cases than any other country in the world. Of our 22 cases, we have succeeded in 20 of them. I think there are probably a few lawyers in here. That's not a bad track record so far. And half of those have been related to agriculture. We have addressed fruit sales to Japan, pork in the Philippines, dairy in Canada, and two of the cases that Secretary Glickman mentioned with the European Union, first bananas and now today we expect the World Trade Organization to authorize to impose significant penalties, over a hundred million dollars we expect for the Europeans' failure to open their market to our American-produced beef. And these penalties will remain in place until the EU agrees to lift this unauthorized, unjustified, and illegal ban.

These examples, and I want to add to those, as Secretary Glickman mentioned our recent agreement with China. The bilateral rule we call sanitary and phytosanitary agreement where China agreed after nearly 30 years to lift its ban on much of our wheat, to lift its ban on citrus, to lift its ban on beef and pork and poultry. When combined with the cuts in tariffs China has agreed to in agriculture upon the recession to the WTO, this will mean a significant increase in access for U.S. producers. China represents nearly one-quarter of the world's population. They have less than 7 percent of the world's land. If we can bring China into the rules of the World Trading System, if we can open the market, we will help create prosperity for America's farmers.

Let me say as we look towards the next round and we look to the issues that we face, the reason that President Clinton called for a new round was to try to go the last mile, to try to get to the rest of these issues, and this will be the next major step in international trade policy setting the world agenda for the years ahead, and as I said, it will begin in the United States later this year. Agricultural issues themselves will be at the heart of the agenda. We'll deal with services, we'll deal with industrial patents and with many other products. But let me tell you. Agriculture will be at the heart of that agenda. And last year when we went to Geneva, in fact our Secretary of Agriculture Dan Glickman was co-chairing our delegation to the WTO talks, sent a very powerful message to the rest of the world that we mean business, and we expect to make progress. Vice President Gore said just recently our economy depends on the fully productive and competitive agriculture, and this round is our single biggest opportunity in trade policy to make sure American agriculture remains the world's standard.

Our general goals right now, reduce tariffs and other barriers to our products overseas; promote fair trade by eliminating foreign subsidies and reducing trade- distorting domestic supports; ensure greater transparency and fairness in state trading; help to ensure that farmers can use safe, modern technologies and particularly biotechnology without fear of trade discrimination; and also ensure, as Secretary Glickman referenced, that recent decisions that American producers have access to effective remedies against dumping, against subsidies, and against import surges from other countries.

As we prepare for this war, the most important element of our preparation is listening. We need to make sure that the things that we negotiate are the things that will help you, and that is why we are here today to listen to you, to hear, to understand firsthand the problems that you see in international trade and to agree on the major opportunities we should hope to realize. With the right objectives and with successful negotiation, we can ensure secure access for America's farm and ranch families for years to come. We can raise living standards for American farm and ranch families. We can ensure good prices and healthy food for consumers, and we can help to realize the broader humanitarian vision of a world free from hunger and with stronger protection for land and water and wildlife. It is a great opportunity for our producers. Secretary Judge and Governor Vilsack, I'm honored and pleased to be here, and I look forward to listening and hearing from the people of Iowa. Thank you very much.