Word: businessmen
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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Currently, the threat of low-priced foreign competition also worries businessmen-and with good reason. The U.S. trade deficit is ballooning toward a horrendous $30 billion this year, almost five times the 1976 figure. The present drop in the value of the dollar-6% against the Swiss franc, for example, in the past eight weeks -hardly inspires confidence either. Unease about many of these matters predates Carter's Inauguration, but there is no question that doubts about the President's economic policy have increased the reluctance to invest. Says Willard Butcher, president of Chase Manhattan Bank: "Frankly, many...
...Administration leaders are worried almost as much about the mood of business as businessmen are worried about them. Says Treasury Secretary W. Michael Blumenthal: "We confront a troubling paradox: on the one hand, good economic recovery in 1977 and reasonably good prospects for 1978; and on the other, the lowest level of business confidence in a long time...
What exactly is it that makes businessmen so apprehensive about Carter? Many executives are far from clear in expressing their doubts. They speak generally of confusion, indecision and a lack of leadership-a view hardly consistent with their assertion that the President is trying to do too much, too soon. But corporate leaders do identify five specific concerns, all of which reinforce in their minds the picture of a President who does not appear to understand the needs of the modern U.S. economy...
Energy. The more businessmen ponder the program that Carter presented to Congress in April, the less they like it. The program relies primarily on taxes to force conservation by raising the cost of fuel to consumers. To many executives, that is wrongheaded reliance on Government fiat. The emphasis, they think, should be put on increasing production of oil, gas, coal and nuclear power by granting energy companies more incentives. David Packard, chairman of Hewlett-Packard Co., Palo Alto, Calif., a maker of measuring instruments, says with a snort that Energy Secretary James Schlesinger, who put the program together, "doesn...
That is an angry exaggeration: Schlesinger is conceded even by most of those who disagree with him to possess a first-class mind, and he and Carter are grappling with a peculiarly baffling problem to which no one has proposed a wholly satisfactory solution. Businessmen argue that Carter's taxes would only feed inflation without reducing consumption much; the Administration contends that fuel costs to the consumer must go up and business cannot expect to take all the increase in profits. The outcome, so far, is a debilitating uncertainty: the House passed Carter's program almost intact...