Reagan to Tell Plan to Boost U.S. Exports

President Reagan Friday renewed his pledge to veto any protectionist legislation, and officials said he will deliver an address Monday on a new trade policy to boost the sale of U.S. goods abroad.

White House spokesman Larry Speakes said that Reagan will detail his “fair trade” initiatives in the speech. The address “will spell out further the President’s concern that unfair trade not be allowed to impair the worldwide free trading system” and elaborate on Administration policies “to promote American exports and assure an international climate of fair trade,” Speakes said.

Reagan’s new trade package, apparently keyed to derailing congressional efforts to crack down on some of America’s trading partners, was expected to include $300 million to help finance American exports suffering severe competition from products subsidized by foreign governments.

It is also expected to recommend new laws to combat piracy of American copyrights and patents.

Opposes Import Quotas

Speakes said that Reagan opposes legislation for import quotas on textiles, a proposal strongly supported on Capitol Hill. The measure would hold textile imports to 1983 levels.

Meanwhile, Reagan’s trade policies were challenged anew Friday as senators threatened speeded-up action to aid the import-battered textile and shoe industries in defiance of White House veto warnings.

A textile rebellion expanded into a shoe uprising at midafternoon when senators from Maine and South Carolina agreed on a strategy to tie import quotas for their home-state industries to an obscure compact on U.S. ties to the Micronesia atolls of the Pacific.

The textile bill, vanguard of a protectionist wave in Congress, became the primary focus of the politically charged debate over the nation’s $150-billion annual trade deficit and job losses caused by imports.

“I am prepared to move the textile bill on the Micronesia compact,” Sen. Ernest F. Hollings (D-S. C.) said. If that fails, he said, he will seek to attach it to “any other possible bill that hits the desk.”

Senate Majority Leader Bob Dole (R-Kan.) said such a move would guarantee lobbyists’ descending on the Capitol en masse in hope of using the Micronesia compact as a vehicle to choke off other imports.