Bush Plants Seeds of Optimism on Trade : Agriculture: President tells farmers he expects agreement with Soviets by summer. Accord would boost grain sales to East.

President Bush said today he hopes to negotiate a new trade agreement with the Soviet Union by this summer’s summit with Mikhail S. Gorbachev in order to help expand markets for American exports.

Bush talked of his hopes for a trade agreement, a goal he and Gorbachev set in their meeting at Malta last December, in a state keenly interested in selling grain to the Soviets.

“This will relax trade barriers between East and West, expanding markets for American exports,” he said in remarks at a $1,000-a-plate fund-raising breakfast for Republican Gov. Kay Orr.

“I feel strongly that selling our grain to the Soviet Union is in America’s interest as well as in the interests of the Soviet Union,” he told more than 500 people attending the breakfast.

Bush also said he will push for a farm bill this year that emphasizes “market-oriented farm policies” that would give farmers more flexibility over what crops they grow.

“What’s good for agriculture is good for America,” he said.

U.S. Trade Representative Carla Anderson Hills said Wednesday the Administration hopes to complete by early May a U.S.-Soviet trade pact that Bush and Gorbachev could sign at their scheduled summit meeting a month later.

The opening round of talks on what would be the first attempt for an economic accord with the Soviets since the early 1970s will begin in Washington on Monday, Hills told the Senate Finance Committee.

A new trade agreement would help remove obstacles to granting the Soviet Union most-favored-nation trade status, a move that could ease the economic straits under which the Soviets are living. The Soviets are looking to expanded economic trade with the West to result from their political reforms.

Later, Bush made an inspection tour of Strategic Air Command headquarters, capping a trip in defense of his $292-billion military budget.

Bush, a World War II torpedo bomber pilot, inspected several bombers at SAC headquarters, donned a brown leather flight jacket and climbed into the cockpit of a B-1 bomber, where he gave a thumbs-up sign.

Delivering a radio address to SAC crews around the world, Bush said he wanted “to salute your role in shaping history, for the historical changes we are seeing in the Soviet Union are in no small part due to the vigilance and sheer hard work of the men and women of the Strategic Air Command.”