Word: bergsten
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...Fred Bergsten, 33, earned a Ph.D. in international economics at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts and spent four years in the State Department before joining the National Security
...Council staff in 1969 as Henry Kissinger's main economics adviser. Convinced that Kissinger considered economics peripheral to foreign policy, the Brooklyn-born Bergsten bailed out in 1971, later joined the Brookings Institution. A monetary-problems specialist, Bergsten warns that the West faces cartelization in timber, bauxite, rubber and coffee as well as in oil. He also cautions that Kissinger will become an anachronism if he does not pay more heed to economic questions...
...quotas alone, according to the estimate of a presidential task force, cost consumers more than $5 billion a year. Sugar quotas, Bergsten figures, add another $500 million to $750 million to consumer bills by keeping U.S. prices twice as high as the world price. Dairy-product quotas, he calculates, raise living costs about $500 million a year, while restraints on meat imports increase shoppers' expenses by $350 million annually. The meat quotas "hit low-income families with particular severity because most meat imports are used in the manufacture of lower-cost items such as frankfurters and hamburgers...
Labor Push. Even these costs pale in comparison with what consumers would face if Congress were to pass the Hartke-Burke bill. On nearly all imports that measure would provide for quotas aimed at rolling back the inflow of foreign goods to 1965-69 levels. Bergsten warns that the resulting price rises might well be great enough to defeat the Administration's Phase II policy, and might necessitate stricter controls...
...Hartke-Burke bill is being co-sponsored by four Senators and 66 Representatives and pushed by the AFL-CIO in a break with unionism's free-trade tradition. In Bergsten's view, that reversal has come about because workers in steel, textiles, shoes and glass, whose industries have been hurt by imports, are heavily overrepresented in the AFL-CIO, while workers in big exporting industries like chemicals and machinery are underrepresented. Fortunately, the dangerous Hartke-Burke bill is likely to be bottled up in committee this year. Its existence, however, and the protectionist strength indicated by its list...