NEW FRONT IN THE COLD WAR

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The challenge is immense: it conjures up a vision of U.S. capital and skill flowing out to far-off lands to dam great rivers, dig new mines, so that millions who know only hunger may share in the freedom and plenty that Americans take for granted. But the businessmen in the Eisenhower Cabinet are not interested in a return to expensive giveaway programs. Their WEP is based on spreading abroad the practices and philosophy that have made the U.S. the wealthiest, most progressive nation in history. Foreign investment is to the advantage of other nations who lack the capital to develop their resources; it is also to the advantage of the U.S.

4,000,000 Dependents. With but 6% of the population, the U.S. produces and consumes almost 50% of the world's annual output of goods and services. Yet if Americans tried to make do without foreign trade, their standard of living would dwindle overnight. There would be no coffee, tea or bananas in the U.S. shops; sugar and pineapples would be priced skyhigh. Telephones (which need 48 different materials from 18 foreign countries), automobiles (300 items from 56 foreign countries) and shoe polish (eight items from abroad) would be scarce and more expensive. Said Harold Stassen last year: "The U.S. depends on the outside world for 100% of its tin, mica, asbestos and chrome, for 99% of its nickel, 95% of its manganese, 93% of its cobalt, 67% of its wool, 65% of its bauxite, 55% of its lead, 42% of its copper."

Still more does U.S. prosperity depend on export markets. Four million Americans work directly for overseas customers. In 1952 U.S. foreign sales of earth-grading machinery were equal to 30% of production; tractors, 23%; textile machinery, 22%; typewriters, 19%; trucks and buses, 16%; refrigerators, 13%; cotton textiles, 9%. U.S. farmers exported the produce of 40 million acres of land—between one-quarter and one-half of all their cotton, tobacco, corn and wheat. About 30% of all U.S. farm marketings are dependent on foreign buyers, and in 1951 farm-export income, divided evenly among U.S. farmers, equaled $1,100 per farm.

Off the U.S. Dole. Every year, still more Americans become dependent on foreign trade. U.S. productive capacity is outrunning U.S. domestic demand—and the result is that thousands of business men are seeking bigger outlets abroad. But if overseas customers are to buy more U.S. goods, providing more jobs for U.S. workers, they must obtain the dollars with which to pay for them. In the years after World War II, U.S. foreign-aid programs helped provide these dollars—35 billion of them, not counting military spending. But the era of "donation diplomacy" is past. "The world must soon stand on its own feet," says Clarence B. Randall, chairman of the U.S. Commission on Foreign Economic Policy. "It must come off the American dole, as it wants to do, and earn its own way, as it is determined to do."

To help the rest of the world stand on its own feet, against poverty and Communism, is the principal objective of a World Economic Policy. Such a policy requires two simultaneous economic offensives: 1) a vigorous expansion of free world trade; 2) a drive to raise living standards in the underdeveloped lands of Asia, Latin America and Africa.

EXPANDING WORLD TRADE