Word: pinay
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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Three of the U.S.'s good friends and hard-bargaining customers agreed last week to take more U.S. goods. They did so with appropriately pretty speeches. "Equity if not gratitude" requires it, said France's Finance Minister Antoine Pinay. Britain's Chancellor of the Exchequer Derick Heathcoat Amory launched into a tribute "to the invaluable help that we and all other countries in the free world have received from the U.S. in economic aid during the difficult postwar period...
France scaled down (from 30% to 27%) import duties on U.S. autos, electric razors, farm machinery. France is giving the U.S. the same reductions it gives its Common Market neighbors. Import quotas on about 200 items ranging from textiles to household appliances were also scrapped, and Pinay promised to junk all remaining import quotas within two years. Foreign-trade experts doubt that this will mean any sizable overall boost in U.S. sales in competition with heavily protected French industry...
...most heavily taxed U.S. imports, some governments may even prefer to see real competition in some fields, e.g., textiles, rather than U.S. retaliation against their own dollar exports. Another effect of quota relaxations may be to prompt U.S. manufacturers to design goods specifically for European markets. Competition, said Antoine Pinay, is "the best of stimulants and the most effective of disciplines...
...time-honored French sport of tax-as-tax-can, the government has historically been a heavy loser. But eight months ago, as part of a campaign called "Operation Embarrassment," French Finance Minister Antoine Pinay opened the nation's previously secret tax records to public scrutiny, was soon inundated by anonymous letters from citizens who wondered how their neighbors could afford a new car on an income of $600 a year. Last week came the payoff: picking up their evening papers, three French businessmen and an elderly widow found themselves the subjects of headline stories branding them as consistent...
Selected at random, the hapless four were the first of "several hundreds" whom the Finance Ministry plans to expose to publicity's unwelcome glare. But shrewd Antoine Pinay knew his compatriots too well to rely on shame alone: under new Finance Ministry regulations, police mounted guard over the homes of the four artless dodgers, prevented them from going to work, and withdrew their drivers' licenses. "They can appeal," said a Finance Ministry spokesman. "But we are refusing all settlement out of court. And they are all liable to at least six months in prison, plus fine, plus back...