LEADING ECONOMISTS CALL FOR MORE GROWTH ABROAD A panel of four leading economists told a congressional hearing today that foreign economies will need to expand to avoid recession as the U.S. trade deficit declines. C. Fred Bergsten, a former senior Treasury Department official, and Robert Solomon of the Brookings Institution told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, the major exporting countries risk recession if they do not expand because U.S. demand for imports is expected to fall. "They need to beef up domestic demand as their trade surplus falls," or unemployment will keep growing, Bergsten said. Bergsten predicted the U.S. trade deficit, which hit 169 billion dlrs last year, will fall 30-40 billion dlrs a year for the next two years as a result of the dollar's 35-40 pct decline since September 1985. The government should intervene to push the dollar down further if the previous declines do not lead to an improvement in the trade picture, if the U.S. budget deficit is not reduced and if foreign expansion does not occur, he added. Solomon said the dollar must fall further to compensate for the huge interest payments required on U.S. foreign debt. The Paris agreement between the major industrialized countries provided only for a pause in its decline, he said. Rimmer de Vries, senior vice president of Morgan Guaranty Trust Co., said the U.S. trade deficit problem is a problem of lagging growth in industrial economies, prolonged currency misalignment, debt problems of the developing countries, and unbalanced growth in the Asian industrializing countries. John Makin of the American Enterprise Institute, suggested foreign tax cuts to increase demand and pick up the slack from the U.S. trade deficit fall.