TRADE REVIVAL IN EUROPE NO THREAT TO AMERICAN EXPORTS

Grey River Argus, 17 February 1949, Page 5

TRADE REVIVAL IN EUROPE NO THREAT TO AMERICAN EXPORTS

Reasons for Sending Aid Are Detailed (Rec. 8.30). WASHINGTON, Feb. 16. The revival of Europe's exports under the Marshall Plan entailed no threat to the future of American foreign trade, said the Assistant Secretary of State for Economic Affairs, Mr 1 Willard Thorp. He said that if the United States failed to continue its substantial dollar help, Europe would be unable to maintain a high level of imports from the United States. He saw reasons for optimism on the prospects of the rest of the world obtaining dollars to do a large part of their buying in the United States. Barring a recession, American purchases abroad should continue to be high. “The decline in our purchases of imports would have a serious impact on world recovery”, he said. TRADE WITH EAST EUROPE

EXPECTED The Senate Foreign Relations Committee has, meanwhile, studied a report by the Economic Co-operation Administration stating that it expected that trade would be valued at three thousand million dollars between Western Europe and the Com-munist-controlled countries in the next two years. The report said that the Economic Co-operation Administration was encouraging this trade, but only within the limits of national security”. Machinery, steel, and other industrial products were now going into Eastern Europe in return for coal, timber, grains, and potash. A failure to maintain East-West trade would impose on the countries of Western Europe the difficult task of finding alternative sources outside of Eastern Europe for about fifteen hundred million dollars worth of commodities annually, and would substantially increase the Marshall Plan cost to the United States.

MR HOFFMAN’S EXPLANATION In a report to Congress on the programme of the Economic Co-opera-tion Administration, Mr Paul Hoffman said that fears that the Marshall Plan would result in higher prices in the United States had been proved to be unfounded. Mr Hoffman said that the United States’ aid to Europe must be continued, because the stake of the United States abroad was economic as well as political. He said: “Unless Europe regains its economic health, and again becomes self-supporting, we cannot hope to establish in the world the non-dis-criminatory trade and financial policies for which we stand. If conditions in Europe had continued to deteriorate. all American business would have suffered”. • U.S.A. Offers to Trade With Soviet BlocBut No War Material! GENEVA, Feb. 15 A closed committee of representatives of twenty-three Western and Eastern countries which was appointed by the United Nations, yesterday began one week’s consideration oi trade development. The committee heard both Western and Eastern European representatives say that lor European recovery trade across the Iron Curtain must be increased to two or three times its present level. The Swedish, French and Netherlands delegates proposed that the committee get down to work in two groups, charged first with finding financial machinery for improving EastWest trade and European trade in general, and secondly, establishing list of the main commodities required from each other by the East and West and in what quantities. It is reported that the United States declined to deliver strategic materials to the Soviet Union, but offered a great increase of East-West trade in other materials. Mr Paul Porter, the United States deelgate, is stated to have told the closed committee meeting that the United States must maintain its refusal to deliver certain materials to the Soviet Union as long as other countries regarded . her . aims as aggressive, but he said this did not exclude trade in a vast range of other goods. ’ Europe Recovering with U.S. Help Despite Communist Campaign LONDON, Feb. 15 President Truman to-day sent a report to Congress saying that Communist efforts to defeat the European Recovery Programme were failing. The Communist propaganda campaign was powerful and constant, and well backed with talent and money, but the recovery programme was forging ahead in spite of it. The. President’s report was composed b.y the Economic Co-operation Administration, and it covered the speond quarter, to last Septembei, of the European Recovery Programme. The report said that the total output of factories and mines in the Marshal aid countries during that quarter was 10 per cent., larger than in the previous year, and nearly equal to the 1938 rate. The Economic Co-oneration Administration estimated that there was a surplus of 2,500,000 workers most of them in Italy, Greece, and Westein Germany. Only a small part of them could be absorbed by other European countries. So many must emigrate overseas if the problem was to be solved. _ ~ The Economic Co-operation Administration to-day announced an investment guarantee of 300,000’ dollars for the development of an industrial instrument plant near Glasgow, Scotland. The guarantee was issued to. the British subsidiary of an American company. . ~ a a The Economic Co-operation Administration said that the investment would assist the modernisation of British manufacturing methods. The guarantee provided for the conversion of part of the profits into dollars for transfer to the American parent company. ■