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Last April the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, entering its 75th year, issued a challenge: "Let's Sharpen America's Competitive Edge."

Today, Chamber Chairman Edward Donley notes with satisfaction, "the word competitiveness is on everyone's lips. The Reaganadministration has made competitiveness a cornerstone of its agenda, as has Congress."

Donley says the country has heard a clearmessage: "We are in a bind, and it is imperative that all Americans realize it and riseto the challenge. We must look anew at the policies that affect our competitiveness in markets both here and overseas. We must have policies that aid and abet our economic competitiveness--to give ourselves a level playing field with our competitors."

And the Chamber, the world's largest business federation, has been active in other areas of critical importance to American business.

The organizationwas deeply involved in bringing about enactment of the historic tax-reform bill that significantly reduced tax rates. The Chamber, after lobbying tomake the bill more acceptable (for example, insisting on more favorable depreciation schedules than those in any othercongressional proposal), supported the final compromise because of the extent to which it lowered marginal rates on earnings.

The bill provides increased expensing allowancesand new health insurance deductions for small business owners, but it also increased taxes on investment, research and development and on capital gains. Chairman Donley called those provisions "a major step backwards inour quest for increased competitiveness."

The Chamber will work with Congress to make corrections in the tax bill this year.

Meanwhile, the Chamber is heavilyinvolved as Congress labors to fashion an omnibus trade bill. The Chamber supports constructive trade legislation and agressive implementation of existing lawto provide incentives for U.S. business to export, remove export disincentives and combat unfair trade practicesof other countries without becoming protectionist or denying U.S. consumers access to fairly traded goods and services.

The Chamber also supports measures to improve U.S. worker education andretraining, promote science and technology, protect intellectual property rights overseas, reform antitrust restrictions and further rein in the federal deficit through reduced government spending.

"The really interesting challenge of this year," says Chamber President Richard L. Lesher, "is capitalizing on what seems to be a bipartisan major agreement that the timehas come to work together to make America more competitive."

But Lesher warns that some interests, particularly trade unions, are trying to use thislegislative momentum to advance their own pakcages of quite different proposals--"every one of which would make us less competitive in world markets."

Besides retaliatory tariffs and special-industry protections, these include plant closing restrictions, mandatedemployee benefits such as parental leave, an increased minimum wage and compulsory unionmembership in the construction industry.

Many legislative issues besides trade have occupied Chamber staff and members. Last year,members' views were presented at 64 congressional hearings and in 139 legislative letters. Staffers alone made more than 2,500 personal contacts with senators, representatives and congressional staffs.

The Chamber's legislative scorecard for the year showed 36 wins, 14 partial victories and21 losses on important business issues on which the organizationcommunicated its views to the 99th Congress.

Many of the legislative and regulatory victories were achieved with the help of 87 issue strategy groups.These business coalitions coordinate the resources of a wide range of member businesses.

Legislative activities also included meetings at which top members of the executive and legislative branches briefed members on major issues,publication of an annual resource book detailing major business issues, periodic updates in the Congressional Action newsletter and specialreports to inform members of the Chamber's nationwide member grassroots network.

The Chamber's Briefing Center held sessions for more than 275member associations, chambers, corporations and other groups to help them better understand the issues and more effectively influence the decisions being made on national politices.

The Office of CorporateRelations held one-on-one meetings to get input of many member companies on Chamber activities and legislative initiatives.

The Chamber's economic policy division works directly with Congress and government officials in pursuit ofbusiness aims. It supports the Chamber's lobbying activity through research, developmentof economic forecasts, detailed tax analysis and publications for members and legislators.

Last year it published a study of federal budget policies and lobbied successfully to keep a major tax increase from being used to solve the deficit crisis. The Chamber was an early and enthusiastic supporterof the Gramm-Rudman-Hollings deficit reduction act and continues to lead the effort to strengthen the measure and to head off efforts to weaken it.

The division's new quarterly Journal ofEconomic Growth will now be published in French as well as in English and Spanish and is already making an impact with its messageof free-market approaches as the solution to economic problems.

The economic-policy staff has provided econometric simulations to lawmakers todemonstrate the effects of various economic proposals.

The division also is studying financial market deregulation, the issue of "non-bank banks" and the 1930s' Glass-Steagall Act barringbanks from dealing in securites. Through its economic policy unit, the Chamber has been instrumental in bringing the financial community together to discussthese questions.

Economic researchers also are studying the potential impact of trade portectionism, international debt levels and proposals for imposing interest ceilings on credit-card transactions.

Inthe field of food and agriculture, the Chamber worked last year to achieve uniformity in pesticide regulation, to establish a secondarymarket for farm mortgages, implement patent-term restoration for farm chemicals and prevent greater government intrusion into agricultural markets.

In environmental matters, the Chamber helped forestall unneeeded acid rain bills and reduce regulatory burdens on business in clean water and Superfund bills.

In the energy area, the Chamber helped win hydroelectric reforms, aidingmillions of electricity consumers, and is working for natural gas deregulation, reform of nuclear licensing and Arctic and outer-continental-shelf exploration to assure energy security.

In community resources, the Chamber supported Highway Trust Fundroad building and repair programs free of pork barrel schemes and endorsed privatization ofselected public housing.

In 1986, the Chamber set up a new Service Industries Council to represent the needs and goals of this expanding sector.

In other areas, Chamber members and staff are working to keep organizedcrime control statutes focused on attacking organized crime and not on ordinary cases of commercial fraud, to see that due process is used inattacking fraud in government contracting and to encourage more contracting-out of government services.

On the liability front, the Chamber hasbeen instrumental in developing a consensus federal product liability bill and is leading efforts to promote tort reform nationwide.

In labor andemployee benefits, the Chamber succeeded in preventing passage of several antibusiness proposals. They included proposals that would have mandated parental leave, prevented contractors from having both union and non-union operations, imposed greaterobligations on employers for notifying workers of alleged risks inthe work place and established a system for paying employees on the basis of comparable worth as determined by government formula.

The Chamber also played a key role inpreserving major private sector employee benefits provisions in the tax reform act, helped its airline and railroad members facilitate union decertification before the National Mediation Boardand continued to seek modifications in the Davis-Bacon Act, which effectively requires payment of union wage scales on federally aided construction projects.

The Chamber's international departmentcounted several victories in addition to its continued push for an open and fair trading system that rewards initiative and increases productivity. Among the wins werethe reauthorization of the Export-Import Bank, funding of a government "war chest" to help foreign purchasers pay for U.S. goods and elimination of technology export restrictions not justified on security grounds, including thoseon oil and gas equipment exports to the Soviet Union.