Hosting a visit Friday by U.S. Commerce Secretary Gary Locke, United Parcel Service Inc. CEO Scott Davis put in a plug for free trade agreements.

"UPS has seen that our export volumes have a double-digit volume growth to countries with which the U.S. has negotiated free trade agreements," Mr. Davis said in a speech introducing Mr. Locke. The commerce secretary was in Atlanta promoting President Obama's pledge to double U.S. exports over the next five years.

Mr. Locke, a former Washington governor and the first Chinese-American U.S. commerce secretary, acknowledged the importance of the free trade agreements. Mr. Obama, in his State of the Union speech, expressed support for pending free trade agreements with Panama, Colombia, and South Korea, Mr. Locke said.

"There are a few issues that have to be resolved with each of those," he told a group of several hundred people at the UPS processing center on Pleasantdale Road in Doraville. "Our U.S. trade ambassador, Ron Kirk, has been working with his counterparts in those other countries to address those. But we know how much these trade agreements can mean for U.S. companies."

In a news conference, Mr. Locke said taxation issues are still unresolved on the Panama free trade agreement. In Colombia, the U.S. still has concerns over violence against human rights activists and members of organized labor that has not been adequately prosecuted by the Colombian government.

"Those are issues of the United States Congress," he said. "And until those issues are addressed, the United States Congress will not ratify those agreements. But the administration and Ambassador Kirk are trying to address those and he [Kirk] reports progress."

Currently, less than 1 percent of the 30 million companies in the U.S. export, which is significantly lower than in other developed countries, Mr. Locke said. Fifty-eight percent of the companies that export, do so to only one country, he added.

Atlanta-based UPS, the world's largest package-delivery company, plans to work with the Commerce Department to identify small and medium-sized companies that are only exporting to one country and help them expand to others. Mr. Locke said.

"That's where we can have the most impact," he said. "These are companies that now export, that understand some of the rules and requirements of exporting and what it means to do business in another country. So we ought to take those countries that have that familiarity with exporting and help them export to even more countries."

The Obama administration also plans to increase lending to companies through the Export-Import Bank and also make more money available to lending through community banks.

Exports account for three-fourths of all sales at Norcross-based Micromeritics Instrument Corp., which makes scientific instruments, Andrew Sherwood, the company's Asia-Pacific manager, said at the Friday UPS event. The company has four offices in China and five in Europe, he said.

One way to improve exports would be to cut the amount of time it takes for overseas executives visiting the U.S. on business to get travel visas. "We know there are issues related to security and immigration," said Mr. Sherwood, who chairs the North Georgia District Export Council. "But surely, a duly appointed overseas representative invited by his U.S. principal, should not have to wait six months for his visa interview."

He also called for a "more rational, more easily understandable set of rules" for U.S. technology exports.

Mr. Locke replied that the government is working on speeding up the visa process for business travelers and streamlining rules on U.S. technology exports. But he stressed that the government's priority is national security, preventing U.S. technology from being sold to terrorists or unfriendly countries.

"There are some things we need to protect even stronger or more aggressively and other things that can be allowed to be exported in a streamlined fashion," he said.  

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