Britain’s Dollar Shortage Creates Dilemma for America

Otago Daily Times, Issue 26544, 20 August 1947, Page 5

Britain’s Dollar Shortage Creates Dilemma for America

Rec. 10.30 p.m. NEW YORK. Aug. 18. The Herald Tribune, in a leader on the Anglo-American loan talks, says the embarrassing question, is raised, “ What does the United States really want of Britain? It is embarrassing because the cruel answer is embarrassingly simple. We want Britain to have enough dollars to continue taking our surpluses—whether of the farm or of the film industry—and otherwise suppporting a free and fruitful international trading system without our having to supply the dollars ourselves. The answer is not an easy one. The United States wants dollar loans to Britain to result in an economy productive enough to repay the loans and continue buying from America what it is essential for America to sell. “Demanding that Britain reduce her dollar imports and expand her competitive dollar-wlnning exports to a point at which she is free of the dollar altogether is obviously not going to achieve this end,” the paper says. “On the other hand, pouring unrepayable dollar loans into Britain is an even less attractive and potentially more dangerous course. What we really want of Britain is something in between, but to find it is as much our problem as it is Britain’s.”