Word: schmidts
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...conference's old hands, West German Chancellor Helmut Schmidt, as expected, was Reagan's harshest critic, lecturing the U.S. President about his "overreliance" on monetary policy to check inflation. Schmidt openly charged that Reagan's advocacy of stiff trade restrictions with the Soviet Union conflicted with the U.S. decision to lift its embargo on grain sales to Moscow. Still, Schmidt had worked carefully with Trudeau before the conference began to seek "a middle ground" in which...
...economic policies could be criticized but a public confrontation would be avoided. Said one European participant about Schmidt: "The Chancellor is forceful by nature. He was down-to-earth, nononsense, even brusque...
Making the most of his moment in the international spotlight, Trudeau played his moderating role effectively. Distracted perhaps by her problems back home, the normally abrasive Thatcher was unusually restrained and at one session was tactfully helpful. After Schmidt had attacked Reagan's policies, Thatcher looked at the President, her ideological ally, and said soothingly: "Oh, that's all right. Helmut's just being provocative." The laughter, joined in by Schmidt, ended a tense moment...
...private session with Reagan, as well as in the group conversations, Schmidt drove home his attack on U.S. interest levels. In his country, he claimed with some hyperbole, they had resulted in "the highest real interest rates since the birth of Christ." An economist by training and West Germany's onetime Finance Minister, Schmidt insisted that American interest rates had forced Western European countries to raise their own rates in order to keep their currencies from falling even farther behind the rising dollar. The result, he said, was declining business investment, rising unemployment and soaring oil prices, which...
...interest rates high, thus deepening a Western European recession (see ECONOMY & BUSINESS). But at their own pre-summit in Luxembourg two weeks ago, the Europeans could not agree on any common strategy to fight inflation and recession. They are divided between the tight-money policies followed by Thatcher and Schmidt and the stimulative spending approach that Mitterrand is bringing to France...