tive advantage that the United States has in production and proc- 

 essing? 



And as long as we now have the GATT agreement concluded and 

 ready for ratification by the Congress, we may want to look as well 

 at the requirements under the GATT agreement, their effect on ex- 

 isting export programs and how we might fare in a new GATT re- 

 gime, and whether or not we will want to consider new GATT legal 

 policies to help us compete under this new regime. 



With that, I want to call forward the first panel of witnesses, 

 Chris Goldthwait, a familiar face to us. He is General Manager and 

 Associate Administrator, Foreign Ag Service. Mr. Allan 

 Mendelowitz, Managing Director, International Trade, Finance, 

 and Competitiveness, the U.S. General Accounting Office. He will 

 be accompanied by Mr. Phillip Thomas, Assistant Director, Inter- 

 national Trade and Finance Issues at the General Accounting Of- 

 fice, and Mr. Kendall Graffam, Evaluator, General Accounting Of- 

 fice. 



We appreciate your presence this morning. We will start with 

 you, Chris, and then we will hear from Allan. It seems like this is 

 a familiar duo to this subcommittee, and we welcome you both 

 back. 



STATEMENT OF CHRISTOPHER E. GOLDTHWAIT, GENERAL 

 SALES MANAGER AND ASSOCIATE ADMINISTRATOR, FOR- 

 EIGN AGRICULTURAL SERVICE, U.S. DEPARTMENT OF AGRI- 

 CULTURE 



Mr. Goldthwait. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. With 

 your permission, I will give a very brief summary of my testimony 

 and ask that it be entered in full into the record. 



I would like to start by saying that I personally, and I think all 

 of our FAS personnel, are very much excited by the prospects that 

 we see for U.S. agricultural products over the coming decade, from 

 now to the year 2000 and beyond. I have had the opportunity this 

 week to meet with a number of our overseas staff who are in town 

 and what they are telling me about the prospects in markets as far 

 from each other geographically as Japan and Eastern Europe is 

 very exciting. 



In order to capitalize on these opportunities, however, we are 

 going to have to have a very active and concerted strategy to maxi- 

 mize utilization of all of the resources that we have at our disposal, 

 in a concerted and efficient way. And I would like to summarize 

 just three or four points that will help you to understand how we 

 are planning to do this. 



First of all, I will identify the four strategic planning efforts that 

 we have ongoing at the present time. I will talk briefly about the 

 goals that we are setting for ourselves. I will identify some of the 

 elements that will work their way into the eventual strategy that 

 we will implement. 



Last, I will offer a few suggestions about some changes that we 

 are looking at in some of our tools, tools that we have at our own 

 disposal already, but things that perhaps we can do a little dif- 

 ferently to capitalize on the rapidly changing market environment 

 we see around us. 



FAS participates in four strategic planning exercises. 



