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exportwise. Do you think that you can put together a plan that 

 would also bring in the private sector and not just focus on what 

 the USDA is doing? 



Mr. Goldthwait. I think FAS's strategic planning must be de- 

 veloped in close consultation with the private sector, with a very 

 broad range of clients of our activities and our programs, with the 

 input from Congress, with the input from GAO, who is with us 

 here today. I think it must be a broad-reaching effort. I don't think 

 it would be one that is confined just to the Department. 



Mr. Allard. But that wasn't the real focus of my question. I un- 

 derstand you have an outreach function as far as your own pro- 

 grams are concerned, and you can define that in your long-term 

 trade strategy. But we have a lot of private sector out here that 

 is doing international trade. Do you think that you can do that ap- 

 propriately? Maybe that is more appropriately done in the private 

 sector and let these individuals look at not only what is happening 

 in the private sector, but also what is happening with the USDA. 



Perhaps we can get a more complete picture of long-term trade 

 strategies this committee can develop. 



Mr. Goldthwait. The purpose of all of our activities is to enable 

 the private sector to do a better job of identifying markets and sell- 

 ing into them. So clearly I think that their ideas and their input 

 needs to be a big part of our strategic planning in terms of where 

 we go with our resources. 



Mr. Allard. Would you agree that your long-term strategy plan 

 really doesn't reflect U.S. trade strategy as a complete picture, just 

 reflects pretty much on the Department's efforts and not what is 

 also happening in the private sector? 



Mr. Goldthwait. I think that since we wrote the initial strategy, 

 we have become much more cognizant of that broader environment 

 that you are referring to. I think that you will see we are going to 

 be looking not only at our own activities, but we are going to be 

 looking at the activities — the resources of other Government agen- 

 cies. We are going to be looking at ways that perhaps we can better 

 leverage the resources that are at our disposal by focusing more on 

 the private sector. 



Let me give you an example. And this is a narrow example, but 

 I think it is an important one. One thing that we are looking at 

 in terms of our credit guarantee program is trying to make it more 

 user-friendly and trying to make it really respond to what we are 

 hearing from exporters and banks, is the need for credit. 



One of the things we are hearing is that it may be a shorter term 

 credit is what is needed to support some segments of trade. We are 

 getting this from the users of the program, the exporters. If we 

 make a credit available for a shorter time period, you can do enor- 

 mously more over the course of a 3-year period with the same 

 amount of budget subsidy. 



So, I mean, these are the kinds of ideas that we are hearing from 

 the private sector, and as we look at them we are finding other ad- 

 vantages in how we might apply them. 



Mr. Allard. You mentioned the GSM loan program or your 

 guarantee programs, the USDA, in your answer. Do you think it 

 can do more to promote U.S. agricultural exports, and you talked 

 about the short-term loans, are there other things that could be 



