THE FIRST SHOT IS FIRED, JUSTLY, IN A TRADE WAR

In an interview with British television Monday, U.S. Agriculture Secretary Edward R. Madigan dryly pointed out the dangerous absurdity of the current trade tensions between the United States and the European community. Responding to a question about how the United States will respond to recent emanations out of France, Madigan said, "That would be like someone else determining American policy by what they think in Michigan ... or Texas."

Madigan's point, that France is just one part of the European Community, is a good one. At the same time, it underscores a troubling lack of definition in the EC. Its leaders, whose charge to integrate the region by 1993 has been knocked off-track by their own distrusting constituents, have still to learn how to represent all Europeans and not just the bureaucrats and special interests. Case in point: EC President Jacques Delors' undermining of negotiations on the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade last week on behalf of his native France.

For more than six years the United States and Europe have been involved in global negotiations for freer and fairer trade, with one of the more nettlesome issues being that of European farm subsidies for oilseeds (like soybeans). With an agreement imminent last week on this and other subsidy issues, Delors stepped in and told EC Agricultural Commissioner Ray McSharry to can it. McSharry followed orders, and then he resigned in protest.

Early speculation in this country about Delors' action centered around the presidential elections here. At least one Bill Clinton supporter, who Clinton denied was working on his behalf, told Delors that if he waited until after the elections to make an agreement (thus nixing a major foreign policy success for Bush going into last Tuesday's voting), he would curry favor with a Clinton administration. How much this suggestion influenced Delors is unclear. However, it was more likely that Delors scuttled the agreement not because of American politics, but French.

French farmers have become dependent on the subsidies they receive from their government to make their oil-seeds competitive with American. And French President Francois Mitterand, who does not wish to see his Socialist power base crumble any farther than it has, wants to keep the subsidies flowing at least until next year's French election. In effect, he is willing to hold the entire world economy hostage to his hopes for another Socialist election victory. Delors, who is supposed to have French presidential aspirations himself, allowed himself to be used by Mitterand and the current French government.

The fact of the matter is that the French Socialist government has been proven wrong on this matter time and time again. The GATT Council has twice ruled that the EC's oil-seed subsidies distort world trade and damage farmers from the U.S. and elsewhere. The EC, as signatory to the GATT process, is supposed to abide by these decisions. But, under French pressure, EC leaders have refused to find a solution, instead pledging time after time to address the issue "next year." As Missouri Sen. Kit Bond expressed to us in an interview recently, the EC even refused to throw the dispute into binding arbitration, knowing it would likely lose.

The off-shoot of last week's breakdown in the GATT negotiations has been the United States' decision to announce trade sanctions of at least $300 million against (primarily) France and its wine makers. The result, however, may be more than the increased cost of imported white wine in this country. It may be a full-blown trade war. No one would gain from such a war, least of all consumers everywhere.

Nevertheless, the first shot has been fired, and it has been fired justly. American farmers have played too long on an uneven field. It is now time that the rest of the EC put France and its farmers in their place.