MOORHEAD - Vice President Dick Cheney, speaking on a campaign stop in Moorhead on Monday, asked sugar producers to trust the Bush administration over Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass., on trade deals.

Sugar is becoming a key campaign issue in the Seventh District of Minnesota, where Bush received his greatest percentage of support in the state in the last election, when Al Gore won Minnesota.

In 2004, both camps are scrapping for votes, and the region's billion-dollar sugar industry is making its voice heard over bilateral trade deals like the Central American Free Trade Agreement that could spell doom.

In the final week of the campaign, both sides of the issue are dumping fresh money into the Red River Valley area in the way of advertising, with radio ads featuring folksy farmers, charging Kerry with flip-flopping on sugar, and the Democratic National Committee charging the Bush administration with "negotiating to kill the sugar industry."

A bipartisan sugar group has launched a "Vote NO On CAFTA" campaign and last week put up billboards on Cheney's route from the airport to his Moorhead town hall meeting.

Cheney, speaking to an audience of several hundred party faithful in the Alex Nemzek Fieldhouse at Minnesota State University-Moorhead, said he grew up in Wyoming and Nebraska as the son of a U.S. Department of Agriculture Soil Conservation Service employee.

While much of the presentation focused on international terrorism and security, one of six questions from the audience came from Bryan Boll, a Gentilly, Minn., sugar farmer, south of Crookston, who serves on the Bush-Cheney farm and ranch committee for the Seventh District.

In his question, Boll asked Cheney to "reaffirm" his administration's position on negotiating sugar trade in the World Trade Organization, rather than through bilateral trade deals, such as CAFTA.

"Our preference is to deal with sugar through the WTO, or at the WTO level," Cheney said, but added, "That's not always possible, obviously."

Cheney drew applause when he noted the recent Australian Free Trade Agreement, in which sugar was ultimately left out of a bi-lateral deal, after considerable pressure from the sugar industry.

He acknowledged CAFTA "does allow some sugar imports into the UnitedStates," but minimized its impact as "the equivalent of one day's production." This has become a significant rub for sugar growers. Cheney referred to a "trigger" in the farm bill that sets imports at 1.4 million tons before sugar marketing allocations are removed, allowing U.S. processors to market as much sugar as they can make, potentially causing an oversupply of sugar and a catastrophic market collapse.

"Last year, in (2003), we imported about 1.1 million tons," Cheney said. "That's about a 300,000 ton cushion here, and about 100,000 tons of that would be affected by this agreement."

Terry Jones, president of the American Beett Sugarbeet Growers Association from Cheney's native Wyoming, recently sent Cheney a letter to tell him the 300,000 cushion is a "myth," because it ignores sugar that could be coming in right now, duty-free from Mexico.

After hearing Cheney, Steve Williams of Fisher, Minn., president of the Red River Valley Sugarbeet Growers Association, said Cheney didn't "address the possibility that NAFTA will consume all of that 'cushion' that he alluded to.

Cheney said the administration is "very sensitive to sugar," but that in the "broader context," it is important to realize that one in three U.S. farm acres must be exported. Soybeans, corn wheat, beef cattle and dairy all are examples of commodities that need access to export markets, he said.

"Our preference is to work though the WTO, whenever we can. We think that's the best way to go," Cheney said.

The heart of the Bush administration's entire strategy is to target European subsidies.

"We'll do our best to keep it a level playing field and make certain we take care of sugar."

North Dakota Gov. John Hoeven, said he was encouraged that Cheney indicated that "when they do have to negotiate a bilateral agreement, get sugar out," a case Hoeven has been making.

Asked why sugar is in the bilaterals in the first place, Hoeven didn't answer, saying only "I think we've moved them a long ways."

In his remarks, Cheney said that Kerry has been "historically, year after year after year, been an opponent of the sugar program."

Later in the day, opponents of CAFTA and Bush sugar policies said Cheney did not explain his own vote in 1985 to cut the sugar program.

Speakers at the Moorhead news conference included Mark Froemke, regional representative for the Bakery, Confectionery, Tobacco Workers and Grain Millers International Union; and sugar farmers Paul Driscoll of East Grand Forks and Diane Ista of Ada, Minn.

Ista said if the CAFTA that Bush negotiated kills the sugar industry, farmers will be forced to plant their 500,000 beet acres to other crops that already are in surplus. "It scares me," she said.

The three echoed charges made by Rep. Collin Peterson, D-Minn., late last week, and said Kerry has committed in writing to renegotiate CAFTA so that it is fair to sugar.

Froemke said Cheney didn't promise to "scrap the CAFTA agreement because it's bad for sugar growers across this nation, bad for working people, and their communities."

Froemke forgives Kerry for voting against sugar in the past. "He was smart enough to realize he'd made a mistake, and corrected his error in judgement and came on the right side because we educated him,"

Froemke said. "It takes a big person to realize they've made a mistake and correct their error."

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