Word: important
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...though few Americans are willing to do the work, the U.S. Department of Labor has in recent years made it harder to hire foreign pickers, arguing that farmers should instead provide jobs for unemployed American citizens. After a legal battle with Washington, the New England growers got permission to import some 1,500 Jamaicans and Canadians just in time to bring in the crop at many of the orchards. TIME'S Judy Jarvis visited the foreign pickers on the job and sent this report...
...deliberate, carefully calculated tactic in Carter's fight to salvage his priority package of energy legislation, which is being gutted in the Senate. It also reflected his genuine fear-and that of advisers like Energy Secretary James Schlesinger-that unless Congress acts soon to reduce U.S. dependence on imported oil, the inevitable consequences will be oil and gas shortages and a further mammoth, inflationary deficit in the U.S. balance of trade. The nation is now spending an appalling $45 billion a year to import oil, and the estimated trade deficit for this year is as high as $25 billion...
...most talked about import restrictions would not make a significant dent in the U.S. trade deficit, which is heading toward $30 billion or more this year, as compared with $6 billion last year. True, about $7.5 billion of this year's deficit is in trade with the Japanese; $22.4 billion is with the OPEC countries, and the U.S. right now has no choice but to import their oil. The U.S. actually enjoys a surplus, though a declining one, in trade with the European Community (see chart...
...strike has had little effect on the nation's economy; expecting the inevitable, importers and exporters rushed container ship deliveries through the ports before the deadline. Although past dock strikes have frequently been ended by Taft-Hartley injunction, the Carter Administration has pledged to keep hands off for the moment to allow the free collective-bargaining process to work. If there is no quick settlement, the I.L.A. threatens to extend the strike to other types of vessels besides container ships. Oil tankers, which haul the nation's biggest import, would not be affected (no longshore labor is required...
...them to analyze a Rorschach ink blot: each responds in terms of his own specialty. Most economists feel that the problem is not one of supply but of price-the cost of getting oil and gas to market. Specialists in international finance say that price as such is less important than the fact that consuming countries cannot keep handing over more and more money to the OPEC cartel members without imperiling global financial stability. By year's end the import bill for the U.S. alone will total $45 billion...