MCLEAN, Va. – The U.S. Apple Association (USApple) and several other agricultural producer organizations are urging Congress to oppose efforts by U.S. trading partners to weaken U.S. antidumping and other remedial trade laws during upcoming international trade negotiations.

Sixty-one senators this week wrote President George W. Bush to express their “strong opposition to any international trade agreement that would weaken U.S. trade laws.”

Sens. Max Baucus (D-Mt.) and Olympia Snowe (R-Maine) were joined by a majority of their colleagues on the Senate Finance Committee, including Senate Republican Leader Trent Lott (R-Miss.) and Democratic Leader Thomas Daschle (D-S.D.), in urging President Bush not to agree to “any provisions that weaken or undermine U.S. trade laws,” such as the nation’s antidumping or countervailing duty laws. The Finance Committee shares jurisdiction on international trade issues with the House Ways and Means Committee.

“Unfortunately, some of our trading partners, many of whom maintain serious unfair trade practices, continue to seek to weaken these laws,” wrote the senators. “[T]he United States should no longer use its trade laws as bargaining chips in trade negotiations….”

USApple, along with several other agricultural producer groups whose members have utilized U.S. trade laws to garner relief from unfair or injurious trade, wrote all members of the Senate April 30 urging them “to send a strong signal from Congress that retention of our U.S. trade remedy laws is a top priority.”

“[S]ome of our trading partners will mount a concerted effort to force the United States to place our trade remedy laws – antidumping, countervailing duty, Section 201 and Section 301 – on the negotiating table,” the agricultural producer groups’ letter states. “Weakening these laws will inevitably lead to abuse of the world’s most open market and would cause irreparable harm to U.S. agriculture and food interests.”

“Our message to President Bush is quite simple: ‘Do not use U.S. trade remedy laws as a bargaining chip in the upcoming trade negotiations,’” said USApple President and CEO Kraig R. Naasz. “We should settle for nothing less than reciprocal access to the world’s foreign markets, and the continued ability to safeguard our producers against unfair and injurious competition.”

U.S. apple growers exported 28 million bushels of fresh apples worth more than $315 million in 1999, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture. The United States imported nearly 9 million bushels of fresh apples with a value of $101 million in the same year, reflecting a $214 million positive balance of trade.

The United States also imports a significant volume of apple juice concentrate, including a recent surge of unfairly priced imports from the People’s Republic of China. The U.S. government levied antidumping duties of up to 52 percent on Chinese concentrate imports in May 2000, following the Commerce Department and U.S. International Trade Commission’s rulings that Chinese concentrate was sold in the U.S. market at prices below production costs causing economic harm to U.S. concentrate producers – a practice called dumping.

The U.S. Apple Association (USApple) is the national trade association representing all segments of the apple industry. Members include 40 state apple associations representing 9,000 apple growers throughout the country, as well as nearly 500 individual firms involved in the apple business. USApple’s mission is to provide the means for all segments of the U.S. apple industry to join in appropriate collective efforts to profitably produce and market apples and apple products.