Word: europeanization
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1980-1989
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...countervailing duties on subsidized imports and retaliate against the products of countries that restrict American exports. Such actions always pose a danger of hampering the flow of trade, but on occasion they can lead to a more open exchange. Take the July "pasta war": the U.S. got the European Community to drop restraints on American citrus products by briefly restricting imports of pasta...
...sure, the trade gap has many causes. In 1983 and 1984, production, jobs and incomes were growing much faster in the U.S. than in many European or Asian economies, so the U.S. was sucking in imports faster than trading partners could expand their purchases from America. The crushing debts piled up by Brazil, Mexico and many less-developed nations have both hindered their ability to buy U.S. products and increased their determination to expand sales in the U.S., so that they can earn enough to continue paying interest on the debts...
That would crimp foreign earnings on sales in the U.S., of course, but Japan and the European powers nonetheless have strong incentives to join the devaluation drive. Most important, the strength of the dollar drains investment capital out of their countries and forces them to keep interest rates higher than they would like them to be to prevent still more money from fleeing to the U.S. A lower price for the dollar might enable them to reduce domestic interest rates and thus speed up their internal economies. And if sales to the U.S. fall? Well, the unattractive alternative is protectionist...
...unless they were supplemented by heavy sales on the part of money traders acting for private-investor clients. And traders are unlikely to make those sales unless they can be convinced that the five governments will back their dollar sales with fundamental changes in economic policy: measures by the European countries and Japan to speed up the growth of their economies and, even more important, a greater cut in the U.S. budget deficit than any now in prospect. Says Mac Destler, senior fellow at the Washington-based Institute for International Economics: "It may be that coordinated intervention will bring...
Such defensiveness would have seemed unlikely a few weeks ago. Not since Smoot-Hawley days had Washington witnessed such an explosion of demand to limit imports as occurred in August and early September. Fretted Sir Roy Denman, Ambassador of the European Community to Washington: "We have seen protectionist sentiment before, but never anything like this...