Sen. Byron Dorgan doesn't know if his new book on U.S. trade policy will be a best-seller, but he hopes it will at least "sound the alarm."

"We're importing more than we're exporting - each day we're selling a bit of America to foreigners," said Dorgan, D-N.D. "Trade is good as long as it's fair - and it's up to this country to demand fair trade."

Dorgan's book "Take This Job and Ship It: How Corporate Greed and Brain Dead Politics is Selling Out America," is out this week, with an initial press run of about 40,000 books, said Joe Rinaldi, publicity director for Thomas Dunne Books, a division of St. Martin's Press.

Dorgan received an advance of $42,500 to write the book, which he said took him about 18 months. But he said it wasn't about the paycheck.

"It's a really important issue," he said. "I had to do it."

Dorgan said the United States is tallying a trade deficit of about $700 billion annually.

"To pay for that, each day we sell some of our country to foreigners," Dorgan writes. "It is a strategy I call 'The Selling of America.'"

Dorgan writes that U.S. product icons such as Levi's, Etch-A-Sketch, Fig Newtons, Huffy Bicycles and Radio Flyer have moved production overseas, leaving scores of Americans without jobs. The companies have cited costs and the need to expand their markets.

Gary Hufbauer, a trade expert and senior fellow at the Institute for International Economics in Washington, D.C., said Dorgan is a "genuine American populist." Hufbauer has not read the book, but he said corporate greed may not be the only reason American jobs move overseas.

"I do believe greed is there, and it's acutely expressed in the high salaries these people pay themselves," Hufbauer said.

He believes the United States also loses jobs because of an "unfriendly tax environment" for large corporations and a lack of adequate education and training. He said it is tempting for corporations to move abroad to expand at relatively little cost.

Tony Bender, a newspaper columnist, author and publisher of North Dakota weekly newspapers in Ashley and Wishek, helped edit Dorgan's book.

"He has connected the dots and has made it easier for people to understand trade," Bender said of Dorgan's book. "What it's really about is people and the gutting of the nation's infrastructure."

Dorgan, 64, has been a part of North Dakota's political scene since 1969, when he was appointed state tax commissioner. He has been in Washington since 1980, when he was first elected to the U.S. House. He moved to the Senate in 1992.

Bender said Dorgan interviewed people for the book who lost their jobs overseas, as well as billionaire investor Warren Buffett, whom Dorgan called a "savvy observer and a strong critic of America's flawed trade strategy and fiscal policy as well."

Bender said Dorgan sees "a real sense of injustice."

"The biggest thing that drove him to write the book is that he saw people are getting hurt," Bender said.

Dorgan's book offers what he believes are solutions to the U.S. trade deficit, including the development of a "fair trade plan," promoting labor unions and cutting tax breaks for companies that export jobs. He also said the 17 federal agencies that deal with trade should be merged into a single agency.

"This isn't hopeless," Dorgan writes. "It isn't rocket science to fix these problems."