U. S. foreign trade is booming and so is the demand for college graduates trained in that field, according to international trade specialists at The American Institute for Foreign Trade, world famed post-graduate school in Phoenix. Arizona, for the training of young college graduates genuinely interested in a career overseas with U. S. business or government.

R. S. Roberts, vice president of The American Institute and widely-known foreign trade authority, who last year completed 11 years in Brazil as a Sears of Brazil executive, as the originator of the first supermarket chain in Brazil, and finally as a consultant to U. S., foreign, and Brazilian firms, said that U. S. international businesses had invested $32 billion oversears as of last year, representing a 17.2% average increase per year. He placed the earnings from these foreign investments at $3 million, 700 million. U. S. foreign sales totaled $64 billion, with exports at $21 billion and sales by U. S. foreign subsislaries at $43 billion for the total.

Roberts, a 1948 graduate of the Institute, applauded the major role played by the 3,000 graduates of this 15-year-old school in the meteoric rise of U. S. foreign trade.

Senator Barry Goldwater, Arizona, member of the Institute board of directors, in a recent speech on the U. S. Senate floor, called American Institute alumni "America's best-trained and most highly-respected corps of goodwill ambassadors." He described the Institute as private industry's training ground for its corps of junior executives in 78 foreign nations.

Graduates in liberal arts, business administration, and science are sought annually at The American Institute for Foreign Trade by more than 500 U. S. international business and banking firms. Fifty percent of the 1960-61 graduates had college majors in liberal arts of sciences Forty-five percent had majored in business administration.

Cited by U. S. and foreign industrialists, educators, and high government officials as America's most effectual institution for the practical training of college graduates in foreign trade. The American Institute offers a 3-part curriculum designed to train its potential junior executives in day-to-day foreign trade techniques, the living culture of the peoples of world market areas, and a foreign language. Recuriters from U. S. international firms have made it clear that they equate general cultural knowledgeability, a properly adjusted attitude toward an overseas career, and aptitude when they select Institute graduates.

About 250 carefully-screened young men are graduated yearly. The post-graduate course of study lasts two semesters and starts from the beginning both in September and in January.

Industry and government officials say there is no institution of comparable stature where determined college graduates may so effectively groom themselves for a lucrative career abroad. Senator Goldwater predicts that most Americans who become business leaders in trade centers around the world in the next few years will have been trained "specifically at The American Institute for Foreign Trade." (For more detailed information, please communicate with The Registrar, The American Institute for Foreign Trade, U. O. Box 191, Phoenix, Arizona; telephone 938-0001.)