MUCH TRADE NEWS IS GOOD; WE SHOULD IGNORE PROTECTIONISTS

Today at 2, the Main Street Opry benefit for the Area Wide United Way will fill the Arena Building with music. This talented group is straight from the Lake of the Ozarks and offers a change of pace on a Sunday afternoon. Tickets are available at Schnucks or at the door. Come on out for a good cause that helps the less fortunate in our community.

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A well-established Cape Girardeau-Jackson-Scott City area event is coming back to town. On Friday, March 6, the annual Mayor's Prayer Breakfast will be held at the Show Me Center beginning at 7:30 a.m.

As of late last week, reservations had topped the 500 level. This year's event promises to maintain the same level of excellence we've come to expect from the Chrisitan Businessmen's Committee. If you've not already done so, make your reservations by calling Bill Terry at 334-4635 or Mick Roper at 335-8005. See you there.

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The Small Business of the Year award earned by Jack Mehner of Advanced Business Systems is certainly a well-deserved honor for one of Cape's most solid employers and family men. Jack started in the early '60s with a small shop and has worked his way up through lots of hard work and attention to his customers' needs. Along the way, he's always been a soft touch for civic and charitable causes, as are other members of his large family.

Good going, Jack.

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Speaking of Jack Mehner, and this next fellow, who says nice guys finish last? This afternoon in New York City, at the Fifth Avenue Synagogue, longtime Cape Girardeau businessman and civic leader Marty Hecht will receive a prestigious award that befits his years of national and international service to his fellow man. At a $150/plate luncheon, Marty will be presented the National Leadership Award under the aegis of the Rabbinical Council of America.

The program describes Marty as "an influential community leader, businessman and philanthropist of world stature." I'd say that gets it right. We're proud Marty calls Cape home.

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One of the most profound comments I've heard on the subject of international trade was in a Walter Williams column we published a few weeks back. The blunt-spoken economist opened a column by asking this question, by way of illustrating our interdependent world economy:

"Suppose you and I are in a canoe and I shoot a hole in my end. What should you do, shoot a hole in yours? Some of our representatives in Congress are saying essentially that. ..."

Williams is right. We're in a "canoe" known as the world economy, and we must always remember it. It's hard to think of a subject that attracts more demagoguery and half-truths than international trade and the alleged "unfair" practices of our trading partners.

That's not to say we don't need to work toward opening Japanese and other markets so that our goods can be sold there. Where unfair practices do exist, we need to work to eliminate them. Still, as George Will and other writers have demonstrated, our skirts aren't always clean on this issue.

I recently heard Lloyd Smith, chief of staff to Congressman Bill Emerson, illustrate this point vividly. Lloyd said that when Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait in August 1990, he received an urgent call from the manager of the Dreyfus rice mill along the river in New Madrid County.

The agitated rice mill manager informed Smith of his grave concern about the hostilities. It seemed that 30 percent of the rice he was shipping that year from Marston, Missouri was going to Irag to feed Iraqis. Yes, Saddam Hussein's Iraq. They lost that market.

That's one small illustration, but every soybean producer knows that every seventh, or every fifth, or every third row of soybeans is destined for export. Our farmers know we need open markets, and that to take one example, we're getting American beef into Japan an accomplishment many said would never happen.

Nor is our interest in trade limited to the vital agri-business sector. Consider these wise and fact-filled words on international trade from the current Forbes magazine:

America's capital news on trade

"It is worth repeating, again and again this election year, that for all the doleful drumbeat from the protectionists who claim that American industry is down and cannot compete internationally, the fact is that U.S. competitiveness as measured by exports has never been stronger. Despite the general slowdown in the world economy, U.S. merchandise exports continue to grow at around 8 percent a year and hit around $425 billion last year.

"What is even more impressive is that the growth in exports of high-tech capital goods has recently been even faster, rising from a 10 percent annual rate last year to an annualized rate of over 20 percent for the last three months. Momentum, in other words, seems to be building. As Federal Reserve Governor Lawrence Lindsey has just pointed out in a key op-ed article in the Wall Street Journal, capital goods now account for a much larger share of a U.S. manufacturing sector that is growing, not shrinking, as Richard Gephardt, Tom Harkin and other neo-protectionists would have us believe. ... Overall, manufacturing, at around 23 percent, accounts for a slightly larger share of gross domestic product than it did in the '60s."

Not all is gloom and doom. The future is bright if we step up to the challenge and declare we're in business. The opportunities are clearly there for those who choose to take advantage of them and for those who refuse to succumb to the siren call of protectionism.