THE NATIONS: Integration

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Industrialists soundly fear that more efficient competitors in other countries would put them out of business if trade barriers were lifted. Economists are afraid that the dislocations necessary to attain the long-range objective of integration would interfere with Western Europe's urgent short-range objective of earning more dollars. Politicians are afraid that economic hardships would give the Communists a chance to recapture lost ground. Said London's Economist last week: "[It] is not possible ... to telescope into one great act of policy a process which took over three generations to complete in the preindustrial United States."

The U.S. was relearning a lesson of its own history: to unite is never so simple as it sounds.