ENVIRONMENT / IMPORT FEARS : Bush Stand on Trade Barriers May Conflict With ‘Big Green’

A Bush Administration proposal to prevent nations from using health and safety standards as trade barriers threatens to undermine efforts under way in California to apply tougher environmental restrictions to imports.

Under current agreements, a country may bar foreign imports that do not meet its health and safety standards. The U.S. trade proposal would allow an arbitrator to decide whether an importing nation’s food safety standards were scientifically defensible, based on U.N. standards.

For some of the most dangerous pesticides, U.S. standards are tougher than those set by the United Nations. Consequently, environmentalists fear that imports banned by the United States or California would be allowed entrance if President Bush’s position is accepted.

THE PROPOSAL: The Bush proposal represents the official U.S. position in current trade talks in Geneva. Negotiations are under way there to revise the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade, which establishes rules and regulations under which most of the world’s goods are exchanged.

Supporters of California’s Proposition 128, known as “Big Green,” are concerned about the U.S. position. The November ballot measure would ban in California at least 19 pesticides now used in the United States and prohibit imports containing them.

But the Administration says some countries are using environmental restrictions as a ruse to keep out foreign foods that compete with domestic products. Administration officials say that most imports still would have to comply with U.S. laws because most U.S. standards are supported by scientific evidence.

“If all of our laws are based on science, we don’t feel we will have trouble defending our standards,” said Sue Heinen, an official with the Foreign Agricultural Service of the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

It is not clear how many products would be affected by Bush’s proposal. Arbitration would be triggered only when an exporter complained that a nation’s environmental standards were being used as a trade barrier.

Mark Ritchie, a farm policy analyst with the Minneapolis-based Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy, noted that a 1989 congressional staff report found that 40% of all imports now tested by the Food and Drug Administration are rejected because they do not meet U.S. health and labeling standards.

Because of funding limitations, the United States tests only about 2% of food imports.

Ritchie contends that Bush’s plan would make U.S. farmers more hostile to environmental regulation because their products would have to comply with costly U.S. environmental restrictions but imports would not.

“If you as a producer in this country have to farm under one set of rules, and imports are coming in under another set of rules, you only have two choices,” Ritchie said. “You live with it or try to lower those standards.”

Environmental standards can vary sharply among countries.

U.N. advisory standards permit 10 to 50 times as much residue of DDT, heptachlor and aldrin on bananas, strawberries, broccoli and lettuce as is allowed in the United States, according to Texas Agricultural Commissioner Jim Hightower. All three of those pesticides have been banned in the United States, although unvoidable trace levels resulting from prior use are allowed.

THE OUTLOOK: Trade negotiations are expected to continue through December, and, once an agreement is reached, it will be sent to Congress. Lawmakers cannot amend it. The package requires majority approval, and some members of Congress already have introduced resolutions opposing the U.S. position.

Whatever compromise results from the Geneva talks, environmentalists are likely to press to make the environment a major issue in future international trade negotiations.