Business: Brandt Sounds the Tocsin

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Energy Cooperation. In a most ambitious suggestion, the commission calls for an "accommodation between oil-producing and -consuming countries." Petroleum exporting nations, on their side, would guarantee levels of production and avoid sudden, large price increases. In return, the developed countries would commit themselves to a stiff conservation program and agree to index the price of oil to the real value of a group of strong currencies. The report also urges an all-out program to discover new oil and gas deposits in Third World countries.

Food. The commission proposes an intensive program to increase food production in the South. An additional $8 billion a year in agricultural development aid would be spent, and meager world emergency food stocks should be in creased from 350,000 tons to as much as 750,000 tons.

Economic Reform. The group proposes the creation of a new international financial institution where the poor countries would have a stronger voice in bankrolling further development. Brandt calls for the establishment of an international tax, perhaps on trade or arms shipments, with the proceeds going to the poorer nations. The troubled world money system should be reformed to restore greater stability among the leading currencies.

The full Brandt commission recommendations for the 1980s and '90s are a combination of the ambitious and realistic plus the romantic and unpractical. The report correctly points out that nations spend $450 billion a year on arms but only $20 billion annually on official development aid. But Brandt's suggested tax on the export of war materiel is likely to be as quickly forgotten as the 1928 Kellogg-Briand treaty outlawing all wars. The commission rightly points out the past weakness of United Nations organizations in dealing with North-South problems but then proposes a new U.N. agency that would coordinate all the other bodies. This unfortunately would result in another set of well-paid international civil servants jetting around the world conducting still more studies and holding still more meetings. The money might be better spent on aid projects themselves rather than on studies and discussions about aid projects.

But the Brandt commission hits several targets accurately. Its proposal for an organized dialogue between oil producers and oil consumers could be one small step for mankind. The run-up in petroleum prices has now got so out of control that it is harming both OPEC and the industrialized countries. Higher oil prices cause more global inflation, which in turn wipes out much of the real earnings from higher priced oil. The OPEC countries have interests beyond these self-defeating price rises, such as guaranteeing their investments in the West and speeding their own modernization. The goals of the oil producers and the oil consumers would best be treated together.

The Brandt report wisely criticizes rich nations for erecting trade barriers against the developing world's new exports, such as shoes, TV sets and clothing. Most poor nations can escape from poverty only if they can find buyers for some of their manufactured products as well as their commodities. The report states bluntly: "A key problem, which has to be solved if long-term world growth is to reach and stay at higher levels, is that of access to Northern markets for the South's manufactures."