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to the growing challenge of economic
survival.
Now, lamentably, those predictioos
are coming to pass.
The Uníted States is slowly but surely
pricing itself out of one international
market after another. Inflation - clip–
ping along now at a 6.2% annual rate
- has robbed tbe country of its tracli–
tional export-over-import surplus. Wage
settlements, far out of line with produc–
tion increases, add to the growing crisis
of U. S. trade.
Abroad, former enemies, now chief
trade partners - Japan and Germany
- continue their rapid industrial and
economic growth. At the same time,
they and other major trading nations
are alarmed by the continua! lack of
economic discipline in the U. S. They
are losing confidence in the ability of
the world's leading banker nation to
manage its own affairs.
"Grand Design" Finisbed?
Largely because of America's eco–
nomic difficulties, the whole fabric of
international trade and economic coop–
eration, so carefully and painstakingly
worked out in Washington and other
leading world capitals, is threatened
with dissolution.
Ever since the conclusion of the Ken–
nedy Round tariff talks in 1967, for
example, it has been fairly dear that
American public opinion is turning
increasingly sour toward one chief trade
ally - the European Common Market.
But it was not always this way.
On July 4, 1962, President John F.
Kennedy said:
"We do not regard a strong and
united Europe as a rival but a part–
ner ... capable of playing a greater role
in the common defense, of responding
more generously to the needs of poorer
nations, of joining with the United
States and others in lowering trade bar–
riers, resolving problem:> of commerce
and commodities and currency, and
developing coorclinated policies in all
economic and diplomatic arcas. . . . The
United States will be ready for a dedar-
lmports are ffooding into the
United States from Jopan ond
Western Europe, feft, while Amer–
icans fight among themselves in
what has been called "The Year
of the Strike." Ruhr, above right,
symbolizes Europe's prosperity
and economic stability.
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to ltieht:
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World, Wolter Moog
ation of interdependence. . . . We will
be prepared to discuss with a united
Europe the ways and means of forming
a concrete Atlantic partnership."
That was eight years ago.
Now, according to one trade expert,
"The bloom is off the rose." The talk in
official circles in the U. S. is more of
trade war
than
partnership.
Senator Jacob K. Javits (N.Y.), long
a leading exponent of free trade and a
champion of close U. S. cooperation
with Europe, expressed the new mood
of pessirnism succinctly in a recent
speech: "1 regret that the European
Common Market is increasingly taking