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Show As a Strong Man to Run a Race If the great plan for lowering world tariffs is the right step to take, ways will be found to keep it from unduly hurting anybody. This is the only tenable approach to a project that offers large opportunities, is based on good economic principles, has strong conservative as well as liberal support, and can inflict serious damage on many honorable businessmen and workers. ' With active concern for this minority, the American people and Congress can face the nation debate on this topic with poise. Without it there is danger to everyone concerned. The American people have steadily supported freer trade as a general rule, but specific demands for protection wields a legitimate and more proportionate influence when it comes to votes. One depressed factory can often cause a congressman to vote no, or to vote yes and then hobble it with restrictions. If attention is paid only to one remark of President Kennedy, Ken-nedy, the national debate could get off on the wrong foot. If all the businesses and workers with a stake in exports will work as hard as those with a stake in protection, he said, the necessary legislation will pass. So it probably would if not next year, then the year after, but by itself this is a divisive approach. The task of liberating trade, keeping abreast of the new onrush of enterprise in the non-Communist world, calls for 'a better and more generous attitude than a bare majority vote. We do not ask for a bureaucratic approach, for buying off the dissenters with tax money. The enterprise approach is to tackle adjustments in the way that business leadership in the United States has pioneered: by welcoming the need for change and converting it from a disaster to a step forward into new products and new markets; by starting with the individual businessman busi-nessman and calling in the voluntary group where necessary; by calling in government where and when the group properly needs assistance. On this latter point, Mr. Kennedy was on firm ground. He promised to ask Congress for a program of "adjustment assistance." assist-ance." Just as government helped industry reconvert after the war, it would have "an obligation to help those who must adjust to a national trade policy adopted for the national good." An advanced society should expect to convert steadily and gladly to those products and processes that keep it advanced. Progress is for the American who "rejoiceth as a strong man to run a race." |
