Word: importance
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...doing just that, but the harbingers of a turn have not yet brought any loud cheering. At best, success for the game plan seems likely to be bought at painful cost-in corporate financial distress, in labor turmoil and, worst of all, in the resurgence of a nationalistic import protectionism that threatens to plunge the world into a trade...
...President is a self-proclaimed free trader, but last month he redeemed an ill-advised 1968 campaign promise by "reluctantly" backing textile quotas to help his Southern supporters. Other industries started calling for relief from import competition. Commerce Secretary Stans complained that the U.S. had become "Uncle Sucker" by lowering trade barriers while other nations kept them. Administration officials are horrified by the protectionist deluge that those comments provoked and are struggling to contain...
Their prospects are not bright. House members have introduced 360 bills to impose quotas on imports as varied as mink, zinc, lead, electronics products, honey and strawberries. In the Senate, Indiana Democrat Vance Hartke is likely to press for mandatory quotas on foreign steel, and Western Senators probably will try to make the meat-import quotas still more restrictive. Even the most zealous supporters of free trade in Washington see little possibility of much modification in the bill...
Because productivity has risen only 9% since 1965 while hourly pay and benefits have climbed 25%, automakers insist that sometimes they can make a satisfactory profit only by shifting operations overseas. Ford and Chrysler will manufacture engines and transmissions in Europe for their new small cars, then import the parts to be fitted into U.S.-assembled cars. All parts for G.M.'s minicar, the Vega, will be made at home, but company officials plan to have the Vega assembled partly by robots in place of union workers. The robots, called Unimates, are one-armed, computer-controlled machines that...
...broad quotas. But the Japanese public is up in arms over what many consider to be a crude and arrogant American stand. Japanese businessmen will be watching to see if their textile industry was right in warning that it was only the first to come under U.S. pressure for import quotas. They may not have to wait long. Next week top executives of the U.S. steel industry plan a one-day blitz of Congress to plead their case for more restrictions on imports of steel products...