First of all, we have a legislatively mandated long-term agricul- 

 tural trade strategy, which is due for renewal this year. In addi- 

 tion, we are beginning the process of participation in the mandated 

 requirements of the Government Performance and Results Act. And 

 beyond that, of course, we have the Trade Promotion Coordinating 

 Committee, the so-called TPCC process, in which we are an active 

 player. 



And last, we have a strategic planning exercise, at least I view 

 it as such, which is somewhat unique for agriculture, and that is 

 of course our own farm bill process. And as you know, we are be- 

 ginning to work on some ideas with respect to the direction the ad- 

 ministration's farm bill proposal will take. 



I have the privilege of cochairing with our Acting Administrator 

 the international trade subgroup, which is looking at this initially 

 on an in-house basis, and we look forward a little later to exploring 

 ideas, some of what we come up with, with you, and with our var- 

 ious clients and producers. 



The goals that we set for ourselves are ambitious, but I think 

 they are reachable. We have established a benchmark of increasing 

 U.S. agricultural exports by 50 percent between now and the year 

 2000. In order to do that, we will develop an integrated strategic 

 plan that maximizes the use of all of our resources and focuses 

 them. 



Last, we will develop individual country strategies that are off- 

 shoots of that strategic plan and support it. They support the 

 achievements, so to speak, that involve expertise from our overseas 

 staff, our Washington staff, our USDA cooperators, and many oth- 

 ers that are in a position to contribute. 



What are going to be some of the elements in this strategy? It 

 is first of all going to have to be an ongoing, kind of a living process 

 as opposed to a paper statement that dictates where you go over 

 a 6-year period. But I think we can identify some things that need 

 to be addressed. 



First of all, we have to focus an awful lot in this strategy on 

 emerging markets. And emerging markets, of course, can be any 

 number of things, as I have suggested before. It can be newly grow- 

 ing country markets, it can be new markets for products that we 

 have not introduced into the export arena previously, or it can be 

 as I think Japan is clearly demonstrating, new opportunities in ex- 

 isting markets that have been strong markets for us over the years. 



Next, I think we must very carefully integrate our trade policy 

 work with our marketing strategy. For the past several years, of 

 course, the focus of our trade policy work has been the two great 

 international negotiations, NAFTA and the MTN. Now that we 

 have those accomplishments behind us, we need to work in a very 

 focused way at how we implement them and how we merge and co- 

 ordinate the implementation with our marketing strategy. 



Next, of course, we must look at all of the tools that are in our 

 work box, and we must see if some of them need changing and aug- 

 mentation, and I will return to this at the end. 



I think that we need to focus in this strategy on both the high 

 value and the bulk commodity markets. Clearly, when we talked 

 about emerging markets, much of the focus there is on the high- 

 value sector. But we also need to look at the bulk markets, where 



