GOVERNOR VILSACK: Secretary, thank you very much. I'm certainly pleased to be here, and I'm pleased to welcome Secretary of Agriculture Dan Glickman and other representatives from across the Midwest, Iowa for this listening post for the World Trade Organization.

And listening post is a very appropriate name for this meeting because we need you to listen to us. The current surplus of commodities in livestock, coupled with drastically falling prices, have plunged American agriculture into a crisis of commerce and conscience. It threatens not only the Jeffersonial ideal of small landownership, but the very survival of family farms and rural communities, and it has the potential to stabilize local, state, and even national economies.

The Hudson Institute recently estimated that farmers must triple food production worldwide in the next 50 years to keep up with rising population. Yet what incentive is there for American farmers to do so when low prices, artificial trade barriers, political decisions based on bad science, and incomplete protection of intellectual property rights promise nothing but economic ruin?

Iowans recognize that this administration has taken important steps in supporting bilateral trade and in creating open trade relationships. We applaud the World Trade Organization discussions and the free trade of the Americans regional round tables, and we're encouraged by the scores of important trade agreements that have been struck around the world. But because of the peril of this moment, we must implore you, and this administration, to do even more.

We respectively request your active attention to the following four world trade imperatives:

First: We urge the continued creation of a carefully structured framework for deciding international trade disputes. This framework must be built on transparent rules and policies, and must establish a simplified process in posing real sanctions when countries do not follow the rules. It is impossible for international companies, much less smaller domestic firms, to succeed when they play by the rules only to be sideswiped by rural countries that simply ignore them. The rule of law needs to ensure a level playing field for all of us. We promise to be good and honest international partners, but we demand the same treatment. Countries that are not in compliance must be held accountable and must be made to suffer significant consequences.

Two: There must be an insistence on a clear articulation of quality standards and the use of good science, not anecdotal innuendo or hysteria when countries decide to ban or limit the access of products to the international marketplace. A prime example of the problems which can arise when such a system is not in place is the European Union's recent decision to keep meat raised with growth hormones out of Europe, and the domino effect of such decisions on the rest of the marketplace.

It is the responsibility of federal and state governments to assist in the evaluation of products and the defense of good science, and to demand the use of clear specifications of quality standards and that good science in international trade disputes. We promise to seek good science and interpret it fairly, but we must have a strong voice representing our interests in the international marketplace, a voice that refuses to accept unreasonable bans and trade interference based on moving standards, hysteria, and questionable science.

Three: We must have greater international protection for intellectual property rights and market access for services. This is critical for obtaining investment capital and pursuing new frontiers and value-added agriculture and biotechnology, as well as creating opportunities for our financial and insurance industries. While we absolutely recognize the importance of sharing discoveries for the good of all, we must also commit ourselves to the protection of patents, copyrights, and intellectual property rights of every strife, for when an outlaw nation allows its citizens to steal and market our intellectual property without redress, we must take action to protect ourselves. Anything less will discourage our leadership on the cutting edge of world technology.

Finally, any trade agreement that is reached between and among nations must meet the standards of a humane world community. They must contain core labor standards and protections of all people, especially children, and they must have built-in safeguards for the environment we all share. These standards and protections must be consistently and aggressively enforced.

Franklin Delano Roosevelt once said that human kindness has never weakened the stamina or softened the fiber of a free people. A nation does not have to be cruel to be tough, nor does international trade.

And as for our environment, we must take the call of John Kennedy which has intensified over time when he said, "The supreme reality of our time is the vulnerability of our planet." So clearly, we must move to create a free and fair trade. As we do so, it remains our responsibility to exercise leadership and to demand that the world's children, its labor force, and our environment do not become the waste products of misguided international industry.

Thomas Watson, the American industrialist who built IBM into the largest manufacturer of its kind in the world, offered us this vision. He said, "With the proper commerce across the borders of all countries, it is unnecessary for soldiers to march across those borders." Now, this vision may have been a bit simplistic, but it does reveal two of the more important by-products of free and fair trade: Engagement and interdependence.

Perhaps when we address the four world trade imperatives I've raised today, when we have a real framework for deciding disputes and real sanctions when nations ignore the rules of law, when we insist on sound science for the classification and limitation of products, when all intellectual property is respected and protected, and when all of our free and fair trade agreements meet the standards of a humane world community, then perhaps we will be fully engaged and interdependent. Then and only then, on a level international playing field, can our market-based economy thrive into the new millennium.

When the future comes, Mr. Secretary, when it is time for propriety to be our judge, I hope that our children and grandchildren can look back to this hour and to these days when, we as a nation and as a people, led the world to full, free, and fair trade, open and accessible markets, and a sustained season of prosperity for all of us.

Thank you for the opportunity to share these comments with you today.