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Show J3eliintl the Jdeadlined bails France out of her economic ills. If not, he is expected to request a loan of as high as $500,000,000 from the U. S. to keep solvent the French economy. This would certainly pose a challenge to the Administration's hope for a balanced bal-anced budget. In any event, devaluation of the French franc also threatens to unloose a trade war between the West European members of NATO this year, despite brave talk about preventing it. Such trade competition risks the collapse col-lapse of the West European Common Market economic unity of Western Europe and the collapse col-lapse of NATO. Russia's shrewd Deputy Premier Pre-mier Mikoyan is already placing himself in a position to take advantage ad-vantage of this. At first reported by this column last April, Mikoyan Miko-yan is getting ready to visit the United States. He is regarded as the Kremlin's Krem-lin's No. 2 man, after Premier Nikita Khrushchev. It is Miko-yan's Miko-yan's second visit to the U. S. Although when he visited the U. S. in 1936 as Commissar of of Food Industry he had no real power or influence in the Kremlin Krem-lin hierarchy. Mikoyan's visit will be the first by a high ranking rank-ing Soviet official since former Foreign Minister Molotov's wartime war-time and postwar trips. By now, most taxpayers have received an interesting "free" booklet as a post Christmas gift from Uncle Sam. It's "How to Prepare Your Income Tax Return," Re-turn," the offical guide to the reckoning April 15. (It is curious that we should be reminded of this so soon after Christmas, when many a harried har-ried householder is also bracing himself for the deluge of bills and when President Eisenhower is burning the midnight oil preparing pre-paring the "bill" (federal budget) bud-get) he will present Congress shortly to run the country. The President has already tipped tip-ped everyone off that he will offer a hopefully balanced $77 billion budget for fiscal '59-'60. Most economy-minded Republicans Republi-cans are hailing it, while most Democrats are denouncing it as penny pinching and unrealistic. And in any event, everyone in Washington, including the Presided Pres-ided knows that the best laid budget's plans can be upset by an unlikely recession, a war or, as is more likely, by unexpected twists and turns in the Cold War. The devaluation of the franc by President elect Charles de Gaulle is an attempt to apply "hard money" policies to the runaway French inflation. We Americans have an important stake in this. To begin with, it means France will be competing compet-ing more actively in world trade increasing world wide trade competition. If this fails to occur, almost inevitably, in-evitably, or perhaps in any event France will be almost certain to ask the U. S. for a sizeable loan to bail her out. More than one Washington observer ob-server believes President Eisenhower's Eisen-hower's statement, "I like de Gaulle" during the French government gov-ernment crisis last summer will come back with a price tag on De Gaulle is expected to visit the U. S. within the next few months. It's reported that he wishes to delay his trip to see if his devaluation of the franc There has been a lot of speculation spec-ulation about the timing and reasons behind Mikoyan's visit. Washington believes the key reason is that he will seek to arrange a visit to the U. S. by his boss Krushchev, which would in effect be a summit meeting between Nikita and President Eisenhower, who would certainly certain-ly receive him if Krushchev came. It is also felt that Mikoyan's visit is timed with the forthcoming forthcom-ing Communist Party Congress to bolster Krushchev's stock as undisputed leader of world Communism. There is speculation that Mi koyan is coming to figure out whether Moscow should decide whether it is better to deal with the present administration, or wait to see who occupies the White House in 1960. It is being guessed that Mikoyan Mi-koyan carries secret proposals for solving Berlin's crisis, created cre-ated so that Krushchev could make gains by negotiating a settlement. But little has been said about the possibility that charmer Mikoyan Mi-koyan is also believed to be visiting the U. S. to seek a big U. S. loan, of as much as $100 , billion to pay for expanded trade with the Soviets. Krushchev has hinted that he seeks trade credits with the U.S. to carry on an expanded trade with the U. S. Moscow has nothing noth-ing to offer us, except the pros: pect, that "more trade could improve im-prove chances for peace between the U. S. and Soviet Union." This means that Peace on Earth would carry a new price tag which the American taxpayer alone must decide whether he'd be willing to pay, since one way or another he'd have to foot the bill. |