Any company that wants to import goods into the United States would have to get a government certificate, under a plan to eliminate the nation's trade deficit proposed by two Democratic senators Thursday, The New York Times reported Friday.

"We're choking on trade debt and it is becoming a bigger and bigger danger to our country by the day," Senator Byron L. Dorgan of North Dakota was quoted as saying. "We need a new strategy, and that is what we are proposing today."

The U.S. trade gap reached a record 717 billion dollars in 2005 and is on track to exceed 800 billion dollars this year, according to the report.

Dorgan and Senator Russell D. Feingold of Wisconsin said the bill would create a market-based system to cut the trade deficit to zero within 10 years.

Under the measure, companies that export goods from the United States would be issued a certificate to import goods. The exporter could use the certificate or sell it to another company, the senators said.

The plan would be phased in over five years, with one dollar in exports earning 1.40 dollars in import certificates the first year, 1.30 dollars the second year, 1.20 dollars the third year and so on.

For oil, the phase-in period would be 10 years, to give the economy time to find and develop alternative energy supplies, the senators said.

Sherman E. Katz, a trade scholar at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, said the plan was an impractical approach to reducing the deficit that would burden American consumers with higher prices and anger trading partners.

"This is well intentioned, but it looks on the face of it to represent an enormous intrusion of government activity" into business totaling trillions of dollars each year, he said.

Feingold criticized the North American Free Trade Agreement and trade agreements with China and Central America that he said had contributed to the deficit and had led to job losses in the United States.

Source: Xinhua