Word: softeners
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Connally, meanwhile, rushed into meetings with foreign finance ministers, dropped any pretense of charm, and freely used the 10% surcharge as a club to demand monetary concessions from the astonished officials. Worried about the global and domestic repercussions, Kissinger and Burns eventually asked Nixon to soften Connally's approach. Japan and Canada in particular were incensed at the trade penalties, since they rely so heavily upon U.S. markets. But the U.S. at year's end struck a good bargain. The deal was taking shape: a shift in the balance of world currencies in exchange for devaluation of the dollar...
...compulsion to settle." With those cool words, John Connally continued to play his risky poker hand in the high-stakes game of international money. Publicly, at least, the Secretary of the Treasury refused to soften the Nixon Administration's economic moves, which have upset and unsettled the trading world. Foreigners were increasingly angered by what they perceived to be brutally nationalistic U.S. policies-the 10% surtax on most imports, the proposed "buy American" investment credit at home, and the demand that other nations revalue their currencies upward against the dollar. A Canadian diplomat complained in Ottawa: "America seems...
...hold price increases voluntarily to 5% for the next year, v. the present rate of 10%. Members of the Confederation of British Industry are making their pledges in writing, while chiefs of major nationally owned businesses have also agreed to go along. The Conservatives hope that the package will soften labor's wage demands. The Trades Union Congress hailed the stimulating aspects of the move, but union chiefs guardedly agreed to "respond" on wage restraints only if the upward sweep of prices is indeed checked...
...Agnew's relations with the press have done little to soften his austere image. Indeed, he and his staff have shown little more than an icy tolerance for either the traveling press contingent or native journalists. During an airborne press conference, the Vice President accused the American press of a Communist bias. As a result, foreign press coverage has frequently been less than flattering. The Kuwait Times, in an editorial titled "An Odd Experience with American Courtesy," complained that Agnew was making only a "palace visit," and that "to the masses, and ironically enough, for the local pressmen...
Though Japan and China are bound to play a growing role, for a long time to come the position of the U.S. and the Soviet Union as the world's two nuclear supernations will remain intact. Widely held ideas that emergent or neutralist nations can "soften" or replace the two-power role have proved illusory, as even India learned when Peking's 1962 strikes across the northern mountains brought Indian pleas for military aid from any quarter. East-West ideological battles are bound to continue, though perhaps in abated form, and so will jockeying for political and military...