
                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: MONDAY, September 26, 1994                   TAG: 9409260016
SECTION: EDITORIAL                    PAGE: A8   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: 
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium

RATIFYING VOTE

VIRGINIA'S congressional delegation will presumably race to help ratify the revised General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade, which would reduce trade barriers worldwide, and which two Republican presidents and the Clinton administration have struggled hard to achieve.

How could our representatives reasonably do otherwise?

Virginia's economy depends increasingly on exports, so Virginian employers and workers stand to gain from the boost to international commerce that the agreement would provide.

According to a study by the U.S. Commerce Department, exports in 1992 added some $10.6 billion to Virginia's economic base. Europe accounts for 40 percent of the state's exports.

So what do our representatives in Washington suppose would be the effect of eliminating European Community duties on, for example, paper and paper products and furniture and wood products - which the new GATT would accomplish?

Or take chemical products. Virginian employers exported $857 million worth of them in 1992. The trade pact would harmonize duties at lower levels abroad, and would improve protection for patents, trademarks and other intellectual property. Such reforms, our congressional representatives should know, could help Virginia's chemical-exporting industries - and job creation within those industries - in a big way.

According to the Commerce Department analysis: "Duty elimination on Virginia's exports of many types of industrial machinery will also boost exports and support Virginia's growing role as a location for foreign companies to invest." That should count for something, too.

U.S. Treasury Secretary Lloyd Bentsen estimates that the revised GATT, by boosting exports, will increase America's income annually by as much as $1,700 per family. That includes Virginia families.

A vote on the new trade agreement is coming soon in Congress. A vote to ratify should gratify. A vote to delay should outrage.

by CNB