What was going on when I was born?

The Reagan Administration, having organized a team of officials to deal with international trade issues, is now moving to speed up a drive to eliminate Government hindrances to exports. At a White House meeting last Thursday of the Trade Policy Committee, which is headed by Bill Brock, the United States Trade Representative, decisions were made to press for relaxation of the following trade disincentives: - A kind of double taxation of Americans working abroad, who are hit by both the host country's tax collectors and the Internal Revenue Service. - Antitrust and banking laws that prevent American companies and financial institutions from banding together in foreign sales activities. - The Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, which puts American companies at a disadvantage with rigorous controls over commissions paid to foreign representatives and stiff penalties for violations.

The A.F.L.-C.I.O. issued a statement today opposing wholesale cuts in Federal programs, calling for job and training programs for the unemployed and supporting tax relief for the poor and for industries and regions in economic difficulty, rather than general tax relief. The statement also spoke out against high interest rates and the deregulation of natural gas. While the executive council of the organization did not directly criticize President Reagan's approach to dealing with the nation's economic ills, it nonetheless set a series of economic goals that would be in direct conflict with those Mr. Reagan is expected to propose Wednesday. Old Positions Reaffirmed Lane Kirkland, president of the American Federation of Labor and Congress of Industrial Organizations, said at a news conference later today that the policies put forward by the executive council as its quarterly meeting began at a luxury hotel here were in large measure reaffirmation of positions long held by the federation. In the context of President Reagan's impending statement of economic policy, however, they represent a challenge to the new Administration's plans.

Twelve years ago Sandra Petker and her family moved from the Canarsie section of Brooklyn into a house in Rosedale, Queens, that they had bought for $40,000. While her two daughters went to school and her husband worked distributing beverages, she plunged into community work. For years, as president of the Parent-Teacher Association of Intermediate School 231 and then as a member of Community School Board 29, her main project was to organize a junior high school in Rosedale. The I.S. 231 annex that opened in 1977 on the upper floor of Public School 138, at 252d Street and Weller Avenue, became a focus of community pride for Mrs. Petker and other white Rosedale residents - and a rallying point to stem the exodus of whites from the community as blacks moved in increasingly. Although Mrs. Petker's children are now in college and she is no longer on the community board, she was at the forefront when protests broke out in the community earlier this month over the closing of the annex.

In a sports article Saturday dealing with Rick Cerone's salary dispute, and again yesterday in Red Smith's col- umn, Jesse Simons was identified in- correctly. Mr. Simons, the arbitrator who ruled in the dispute, left New York City's Office of Collective Bargaining 11 years ago.

SCIENTISTS have long wondered why various species of animal, including human beings, sometimes produce lopsided ratios of male to female offspring. For example, in two species of seal it has been found that females giving birth early in the season produce 12 males for every 10 females. Those who pup late produce a male-to-female ratio of 8 to 10, evening the score. Human mothers under stress tend to produce fewer boys than girls.

Grading automobile tires for consumers is not as simple as A-B-C, argue the rubber manufacturers who oppose the Federal Government's new tire-grading system, which Uniroyal Inc. alone has embraced. ''The grading system is misleading to the point that consumers are getting a bum rap,'' said John Eagleburger, a tire engineer and manager of technical coordination for product quality and safety at the Goodyear Tire and Rubber Company. He calls the tire evaluation system of the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration ''a gross oversimplification.'' The grading system - for treadwear, traction and temperature resistance - attracted little attention outside the rubber industry until Uniroyal began using the ratings in its advertising last month. The ads startled the other major domestic companies, which, along with Uniroyal, spent nearly four years in an unsuccessful battle to block the grading system, published by the agency in 1975.

Common Market Finance Ministers urged the United States to reduce the broad gap between interest rates in America and Europe. This gap, they said, had caused the dollar's sharp rise on currency markets and the concurrent weakness of their own currencies. The officials were said to have acted in response to Bonn's effort to seek an internationally coordinated reduction of interest rates to reduce pressure on the German mark. (Page D1.)

A Reagan Administration interagency committee has reportedly found no substantial legal obstacles to carrying out the terms negotiated with Iran for the release of the 52 American hostages, Administration officials said today. The review, which took the committee almost a month to complete, was sent to the White House over the weekend for final discussion by President Reagan and a Cabinet-level group. An announcement is expected to be made by the Administration on its view of the agreement negotiated by the Carter Administration sometime in the next two days, White House officials said today. Acceptance of Pact Expected Officials said that the Reagan Administration, while uncomfortable with some aspects of the complex arrangement that produced the hostages' release on Jan. 20, is expected to accept it grudgingly. The Administration was said to be reluctant either to embrace the accord warmly or to bring new public attention on the matter by rejecting parts of it.

After a series of management shakeups and a short-lived takeover bid from Allegheny Ludlum, Blue Bell Inc., the No.2 jeans manufacturer, is struggling to get its house in order and compete more aggressively with the big Levi Strauss & Company. Following its annual shareholders' meeting Feb.3, the board abolished the offices of chairman and vice chairman, effectively discharging two septuagenarians who had each been with the company for nearly 50 years. The move came shortly after the board voted to reject the bid by Allegheny Ludlum Industries Inc. Analysts say that the actions have consolidated the power of the president and chief executive officer, L. Kimsey Mann, 63 years old, who has headed Blue Bell for the past seven years.

West of the capital, past the sprawling suburbs, the interminable auto graveyards and an abandoned sugar mill, 5,000 acres of prime farmland lie idle, plowed under several years ago to make way for an ambitious government project to grow rice. After years of false starts and $21 million in spending, a rice mill is in the final stages of construction, but only about 200 acres of rice are in cultivation. Under the most optimistic plans, it will take three years to bring 12,000 acres under cultivation so the mill can break even. The difficulties encountered in the island's efforts to grow rice, a staple now imported at a rate of 380 million pounds a year, illustrate much about what has gone wrong with Puerto Rican agriculture in recent years and the damage that can be done to a people in trying to move too quickly toward an industrial society. Workers Left Farm Jobs Farm jobs were abandoned, but the new industrial growth could not provide enough work quickly enough to replace them and keep up with the population growth. Nor could wages keep up, and the food stamps that were meant to help the Puerto Rican poor have helped also to destroy agricultural production in an economic cycle the nation has been unable to halt.

European finance ministers today urged the United States to help reduce the broad gap between interest rates in America and Europe. They said that the substantially higher rates in the United States were the major reason for the dollar's recent steep climb against European currencies. Meeting in Brussels, the ministers of the European Economic Community said they had agreed to ask French Finance Minister Rene Monory to explain the European position to American officials later this week at a meeting of the International Monetary Fund's interim committee in Washington. The E.C.C.'s decision to seek a narrowing between European and American interest rates is understood to be the result of an effort by West Germany, which is seeking support from its Western trading partners, including the United States, for a coordinated reduction of interest rates.

Both sides in the Jean S. Harris murder trial asked the jury of eight women and four men today to consider guilt or innocence only on the charge of murder in the second degree. Judge Russell R. Leggett, who has been presiding over the trial in Westchester County Court, nevertheless may offer the jurors the opportunity to consider lesser penalties, including manslaughter, when he explains the law to them tomorrow. They will then get the case. Second-degree murder is the maximum charge possible, and the maximum penalty on conviction is 25 years to life in prison. In the first of summations that prompted a mixture of groans, laughter and applause in the packed chamber, Joel Aurnou, Mrs. Harris's lawyer, implied that George Bolen, the prosecutor, would ask the judge to consider ''something less'' because, as Mr. Aurnou put it, ''his case is in fragments.''