[Intl-tobacco] N.C. wants China to accept U.S. leaf (fwd)

[Robert Weissman]

N.C. wants China to accept U.S. leaf
Government urged to pressure Beijing into opening its markets
by David Rice  / JOURNAL RALEIGH BUREAU

NC/CHINA;
Source: Winston-Salem Journal, Thursday, 3/9/00

  RALEIGH 

 As Americans smoke less and North Carolina farmers look for ways to sell
their tobacco overseas, political pressure is mounting for the United
States to demand that China accept American-grown leaf.

 China bans U.S.-grown tobacco, saying that blue-mold spores in American
tobacco could contaminate Chinese tobacco crops. But American tobacco
interests say that the disease cannot survive in cured leaf.

 A rural-development task force headed by Erskine Bowles, a former White
House chief of staff, recommended last month that state officials pressure
Washington to make acceptance of U.S. tobacco a condition of China's
admission to the World Trade Organization.

 U.S. Rep. Bob Etheridge, D-2nd, told an international tobacco-marketing
group yesterday that he took up the issue with Agriculture Secretary Dan
Glickman when Glickman visited Raleigh last week, asking him to insist
that China accept American leaf. ''We've got to get beyond the phony issue
of blue mold,'' Etheridge told members of Tobacco Associates Inc. ''I
think they're just using that . . . to protect their farmers. When and if
they get admission to the WTO, that has to go.''

 ''If only 1 percent of the cigarettes smoked in China used American
flue-cured tobacco, the stocks of Stabilization would be cleaned out and
quotas would rise,'' he said.

 ''The exports of flue-cured tobacco would increase by 10 percent almost
immediately. That is some welcome news after what we've been through the
last three years.''

 Tobacco farmers have seen the amount of leaf they are allowed to grow cut
by 54 percent over the past three years.

 Peter Daniel, an assistant to the president of N.C. Farm Bureau, said
that the Farm Bureau plans to ask the state's congressional delegation to
withhold votes for China to receive most-favored-nation trading status if
China won't accept U.S. tobacco.

 Etheridge said that such a vote could come as soon as this summer.

 Pete Burr, a senior tobacco analyst with the U.S. Department of
Agriculture's Foreign Agricultural Service, said, that the United States
and China reached some agreement on market access last April, but the
bombing of the Chinese Embassy in Belgrade brought those talks to a
standstill for at least six months.

 ''It is obvious China has been using this issue to control imports,''
Burr said. ''They're basing their claim . . . on unsound science. And
that's exactly what the WTO doesn't want.''

 But the Chinese are looking for a way to resolve the dispute, Burr said,
and it might be a mistake for U.S. officials to exert too much political
pressure.

 ''If this were to happen, it could wind up delaying a solution,'' he
said. ''The Chinese want to get it resolved soon. They're looking for a
face-saving way out of this.''

 Dan Stevens, the chief of the Tobacco & Peanuts analysis staff with
USDA's Farm Service Agency, also warned that opening Chinese markets might
not be as big a boon as U.S. tobacco interests think.

 China produces 48 percent of the world's flue-cured tobacco but accounts
for only 10 percent of world tobacco exports, Stevens said.

 If China opens its markets, ''That's not going to solve all of our
problems. We're not going to see a lot of flue-cured tobacco moving to
China overnight,'' he said.