Word: pentagon
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...impact of defense cutbacks is amplified as it ripples through the communities where plants and bases are located. Pentagon economists estimate that each dollar spent in contracts triggers $1.60 of spending in the local economy. Reductions have a roughly equal and opposite effect. On Long Island, for example, defense contractors have cut their work force of 60,000 by more than one-fifth since 1987. As a result, an estimated 26,000 other local workers, from pizza-parlor employees to department-store clerks, have lost their jobs...
Traditionally, U.S. defense contractors have coped with periodic downturns in Pentagon spending by boosting their military exports. But that is no longer an easy market. Last year, according to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, global arms imports totaled $34 billion in constant 1985 dollars, a 14% decline from the previous year. Among the reasons: the winding down of regional conflicts like the Iran-Iraq war, reduced oil prices and fewer petrodollars for military customers in the Middle East, and a falloff in Third World purchasing power caused by high debt levels...
...have done. Otherwise, according to a report by the Washington-based Center for Strategic and International Studies, "in place of the arsenal of democracy, the U.S. may find it has only the best pizza parlors in the world." Robert Costello, until recently the Assistant Secretary for Acquisition in the Pentagon, has urged American companies to enter into joint ventures with foreign manufacturers to capture more offshore business...
...costs and preserve programs, former CIA Deputy Director Bobby Inman maintains that defense procurement policies must be streamlined. Defense contractors complain, for example, that the Pentagon insists that parts and equipment be built to military specifications, when less costly, commercially produced gear would often be just as good...
BUSINESS: The shrinking Pentagon budget hits home...