Rye & Water

For ten days 500 businessmen from 52 nations, delegates and hangers-on at the International Business Conference in Rye, N.Y., wined, dined and talked world trade in the Westchester Country Club. Typical of the tangible results: resolutions urging the universal adoption of 1) driving on the right hand side of the street; 2) a uniform measuring system (metric).

On the big questions, the businessmen were skittish, mainly because they were not sure what they wanted. Example: when Robert Gaylord, president of the National Association of Manufacturers, was asked about tariffs, he replied: "We favor low tariffs, but we want to protect American industry and living standards."

The delegates liked Bretton Woods (TIME, July 31), but faintheartedly declined to go on record for it. But the meeting did bring into sharp focus one important problem: the wide disagreement on foreign-trade policies. U.S. delegates were the staunchest and well-nigh only advocates of free competitive trade, even though they showed no unanimous disposition to make the sacrifices postwar free trade would entail. Virtually all other delegates leaned towards cartels. Britain's Sir Clive Baillieu (pronounced Bailey) favored some control by "continuous and public review" of cartels--which he euphemistically called "trade accords."

All talk of free international trade is more idealistic than realistic. Most European businessmen know that the bulk of their foreign trade must for some time be carried on by their governments through some form of government control and support. Many an industry must be nationalized, if only to keep it running till the knotty question of ownership, tangled by the Nazis' financial sabotage of Europe's economy, is cleared up.

But most foreign delegates agreed on one thing. They want 1) U.S. loans, some of them fantastically large; 2) low U.S. tariffs so that they can sell the U.S. the goods they produce, pay back the loans. In hopes of getting both these things, many of the delegates will spend months in the U.S. trying to lay the groundwork for future trade.

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