Reporting and trade liberalization are aimed, of course, at export
market expansion. Other activities, including market promotion and
sales for foreign currencies, have the same objective.
The productive capacity of American agriculture always has given
us more of some commodities than we can use at home. But in recent
years technology has pushed productive capacity far above domestic
needs. This has accentuated the need for expanding exports.
But—foreign countries also produce food and fiber. In most of the
world’s countries, agriculture is the leading occupation of the people.
Many countries, even where diets are poor, tend to resist the influx of
imported food. Furthermore, many friendly nations have developed a
flourishing export trade in the same commodities we are trying to ship.
These and other problems hamper foreign market expansion.
MARKET EXPANSION PROGRAMS
U. S. policy stresses sales for dollars, and in the past few years
dollar sales have accounted for 63 percent of our total exports. In the
case of several major commodities, government subsidies are needed
to keep dollar sales high, but dollar sales in regular commercial chan-
nels represent the preferred way of transacting business.
However, many countries lack dollar exchange. To bridge the gap
between foreign dollar shortages and U. S. farm product surpluses,
Congress in 1954 passed the Agricultural Trade Development and
Assistance Act, popularly known as Public Law 480, which authorizes
sales for foreign currencies. Foreign currency sales have turned out to
be an unusual but effective means of utilizing surpluses, accounting
for over a fourth of U. S. exports on a value basis since 1954. More
than half of the U. S. wheat exported in fiscal year 1959 was sold for
foreign currencies. Also marketed for foreign currencies in 1959 were
two-thirds of our exports of edible oils, a fourth of our rice shipments,
and a fifth of our cotton exports.
Foreign currency sales have made us more conscious than ever of
our international responsibilities. In administering foreign currency
sales we have tried to avoid: cutting into sales that we could make for
dollars, disrupting commercial trade of friendly foreign countries,
and undermining prices in world markets. The same holds true of
donations, handled by the Agricultural Marketing Service and the
International Cooperation Administration. The law authorizing barter
operations, administered by the Commodity Stabilization Service,
specifies that barter transactions shall not disturb world markets and
that barter deals also be additional to cash sales that would otherwise
be made.
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