MR. SIROKY: Good morning and thank you for providing this opportunity. My name is Ken Siroky, and I'm a third-generation rancher/farmer from Roy, Montana.

I'm speaking on my own behalf, but have membership in or contribute to Montana Farmers Union, Northern Plains Resource Council, National Farmer's Organization, Nebraska Center for World Affairs, Ox Farm America, and participate in the Campaign to Reclaim Rural America.

I've spent the last three weeks on haying equipment thinking a lot about what to tell you and was met with frustration. Agriculture's frustration and failures can, in part, be traced to trade policy. My personal frustration is a suspicion that exercises like today are an attempt to buy off the rabble cheap and whatever will happen with trade policy is already decided.

It has occurred to me that Charlie Tries's legal campaign contributions may well have a more positive impact on China's side of the China/US trade policy than anything I or my fellow citizens have to say here today.

Nevertheless, I am here and would like to call your attention to two sets of locking pliers I have here that I recently purchased from a Billings area ag supply store. One is an American made vice grip brand name, and the other is a pretty good quality knockoff import. The US made vice grip cost $11.75; the import, $2.49; a $9.26 difference. Now, this is what apparently we've got, I believe what Mr. Schroeder said, from what was 50 years of negotiation. I think that's interesting.

I feel there is at most a $2 or $3 quality difference resulting in a price undercutting of $6 to $7 of the USA product. This means that the vice grip business of DeWitt, Nebraska has unfairly stiff competition and an uncertain future. The people who work there and earn a good wage are fewer in number and may not, at some point, work at all because of this competition and consequently not be able to buy what I produce.

Additionally, the people who make the $2.49 pliers probably aren't earning enough to buy what I produce at a high enough level to sustain my family and operation in this economy. The people who conduct this international business are modern-day pirates stealing from both ends of the middle. They don't ransack ships anymore, they just hire them.

Free trade is a plan designed by greed for greed. It is an inevitable response to the side of human nature that tends to acquire, control, exploit, take advantage. Greed is one of the sins we seek to temper. In trying to bring fairness to our common good, tempering greed is one of the roles we ascribe to government. In the case of free trade, government seems to prefer to aid and abet the wrong side.

These days if a person is opposed to free trade, the label "protectionist" and "isolationist" is quickly attached. Not true. Trade can exist outside the umbrella of free trade, and will proceed in a more orderly fashion with rules. The rules of free trade are to establish the "no rules" idea of free trade. A concept that challenges logic. In the real world, the nation will continually be seeking advantages and establishing trade defenses making the haggling over nonrules infinite. There are those who say they are for free trade as long as there is a level playing field. This is an oxymoron. I refer you to my locking pliers example. The $6 to $7 difference between the producer and consumer economies can almost exclusively be attributed to two factors, labor cost and currency exchange rates. To ignore these factors is to unfairly skewer the domestic market and unfairly enrich those taking advantage of the situation. To account for labor and currency exchange rates is to disavow free trade. Incidentally, equal access is not a level playing field.

I'm opposed to free trade because it transfers wealth from the many to the few.

I am opposed to free trade because it averages our economy in with the others of the world. In that situation, our direction is down.

But lest I be totally negative and cynical, I would like to conclude on a positive note. I would like to congratulate the trade negotiators who defended Chiquita Banana against those weasly small banana producers of the Caribbean. As a result, the Montana/North Dakota Banana Producers Association is pleased to report another year of stable net income. Thank you.

MR. NELSON: Thanks, Jim. Panel?

MR. GALVIN: Can you indicate where those imported vice grips came from, what country?

MR. SIROKY: I called the store and they didn't know. All they assured me was they were imported.

MR. NELSON: Panel, any other questions or comments? Jim, do you --

MR. SCHROEDER: I don't have any questions. I really enjoyed your comments very much. I would love to make some comments back.

MR. SIROKY: Feel free, sir.

MR. SCHROEDER: Just let me say this, and this is sort of a general point on the objectives, goals of our trade negotiators because that's been raised several times. Believe it or not, we don't go in some back room sometime and figure out our own agendas. This Administration, the last administration, the trade negotiators that are in the executive branch, and particularly in the area of trade and agriculture, is the vast array of forces and sources of inputs that we listen to and that guide us.

We have not only sessions like this, we have agriculture policy and agriculture trade advisory committees, both at the Department of Agriculture, as well as, at the USTR. Our congress requires, and if we didn't require, we would be crazy not to, we consult constantly with our elective representatives. So our whole trade agenda, our policies, and our goals are the result of our whole system of government.

Now, for a long time, certainly since 1945 and the end of World War II, but I think you can probably go back further than that, you would might want to go back to New England traders of 1700s, freer trade and fairer trade has been a general objective of the United States of America. We generally prospered under that system and some people would oppose that, object to it, it's not perfect. But that's where we are today, and I think it's probably a balance that's been good for us.

MR. SIROKY: Not in agriculture, sir. If you're growing stock options, you'll do well. If you're growing anything else, you don't.