REPRESENTATIVE WINTER: I'd like to thank the U.S. trade representatives for coming out to the Midwest again. You were in Minneapolis/St. Paul about a month ago and we had a chance to visit with you a little bit then and I had a chance to talk to people back in our area, in our districts about what's going on. I'd like to thank Secretary for helping to put it together down here. In the state of Iowa it's very important to the people who live in these communities to know that somebody is going to listen, to listen to their hearts and to the value of what's going on with them. Their operations are a part it. If we don't do that, if we don't give the people of our communities a chance to come out of their homes and listen to each other and work together on world trade issues, on foreign policy issues, they have no venue for any kind of a chance to make a difference.

And being a trade representative, it's kind of like being a salesman. We need top-notch salesmen working for us as our trade representatives. We need to make sure that they put together the right package that moves our product, and if it means that we've got to give up some of what we believe is important sound science, I think we need to do that. If they don't want to buy hormone beef, a good salesman wouldn't sell them something they don't want to buy. And they wouldn't try to force it down their throats by putting a hundred and some million dollars more sanctions against those countries because they don't want to buy it.

We have to look at what we do with our international trade rules and regulations in a way that we can sell as much as possible. And if we don't do that, first and foremost, we set more barriers up ahead of us to actually get anything done, and anybody that's in the chamber of commerce organization, anybody that runs a business in any town in the city knows that if you don't sell what the person wants and put the right kind of package on it and market it to them, they usually don't buy it. They buy it from somebody else. So we've got to be smart salesmen, number one, and be the best salesmen we can and be the best trade organizers and representatives in that area as possible.

I think one of the things that we have to look at when you look at trade representatives and dealing with other countries and the world is inventory. Farmers have more inventory that they can sell today, and therefore they're getting beat in the marketplace every day with their overproduction. The world has surpluses. If you look at what was going on within the screen that showed the slides of what was happening, the world is producing more too.

We need to have some way that we can look at a federal farm policy in this country that actually looks at inventories that are usable domestically and marketable in the world. And if you can't market it in the world, why produce it? It's stupid. It's just plain dumb.

In looking at who is out there, farmers can produce more than anybody in the world in this country. They can today. We just have to make some way, some sense to look at the federal farm policy of this country and deal with the inventories that are part of that federal farm policy and look at what we can do and how much we can sell. I mean, and balance that out for our farm families. That would be the most important thing that you could, as trade representatives, take to both sides. Work with the federal government to manage the inventory and help with the inventory and look at what you could sell (inaudible). I mean, help our farmers be able to move their products. It's going to take to 2004 now before anything is done in this next round, right? So between now and the next five years, my neighbors and myself and the people that live around my district, I mean, they're not going to be here if we don't fix this before five years from now. So it's good to be here. We need to be good salesmen. We need to make sure that things work right, but we've got to fix the inventory side of what's going on too along with the rest of it and try to manage both of them and look at what we can sell and how much we can sell and then be good salesmen.