Reagan's Cabinet: Mixed Grades

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Block has one early triumph to his credit. Over Haig's objections, he persuaded the President to live up to a campaign promise by lifting the ill-advised grain embargo against the Soviet Union. But Block's subsequent proposal to sell surplus butter to the U.S.S.R., also opposed by Haig, ended in a compromise that pleased few. The butter was sold at about 30% below the world price to New Zealand, which was then free to sell its own butter to the Soviets. The high-cost U.S. dairy surplus program ($2.1 billion in fiscal 1981) lost a lot of money to make a dubious diplomatic point.

Block, a successful hog farmer from Galesburg, Ill., faced his greatest challenge in trying to cope with this year's farm bill. Stockman was determined to defeat the farm lobby by proposing E bill that was so stingy that it would splinter the unity of the various crop-support factions. Said Stockman in his famed—or infamous—Atlantic Monthly interview: "I forced Block into a position that makes his life miserable." Block had recommended the elimination of all direct subsidies and proposed that Congress give him discretionary power to set the loans that determine the floor prices for crops. But he was undermined by the White House, which cut deals with Southern lawmakers by trading the promise of peanut and sugar supports for votes on the budget. Meanwhile, it was business as usual in Congress, where House and Senate conferees put together a pork-barrel farm bill well in excess of what Reagan said he would accept. No wonder the conservative Heritage Foundation concluded that there has been the "appearance that farm policy is not under the direction of the Secretary of Agriculture." That being the case, Block might merit an A for effort but gets a C-minus for impact.

Commerce's Cowboy

A steer roper and rodeo rider, Secretary of Commerce Malcolm Baldrige, 59, occasionally twirls a lasso to show off his old cowboy skills. But the main thing Baldrige is trying to rope in these days is export business for U.S. companies. Having built a small Connecticut brass factory into the $1 billion Scovill Inc., Baldrige wants to instill his Yankee-trader spirit in U.S. businessmen. His department is conducting 1,500 trade seminars to coax smaller businesses into foreign trade and has instituted new training for commercial service officers in U.S. embassies. He also has successfully lobbied for bills to relax the anti-bribery laws for overseas businessmen and exempt trading companies from antitrust enforcement.

Although an ardent free-trader, Baldrige has pressed charges against five countries accused of dumping cut-rate steel on the U.S. market and has pushed for "voluntary restraints" on Japan's car exports. He also hopes to help the American auto industry by persuading Congress to loosen the Clean Air Act's auto-emission standards. Ahead is a battle with Stockman, who wants to eliminate the department's office of export development and Foreign Commercial Service from the 1983 budget. Unlike most Commerce Secretaries, who labor away in obscurity, "Mac" Baldrige has a good channel to the President. They go horseback riding together at Quantico, Va. His performance is a solid Aminus, but he is in a C-minus post.

Labor Pains