Needed: Exportfreudigkeit

In the summer of 1960 the nations of Europe were thriving with a prosperity that they had never before known. But in the midst of soaring statistics and optimism, there was one exception: Great Britain, which was again reminded of how perilous a trader's prosperity can be.

Britain's books were out of balance. In the first quarter, world exports of manufactured goods were up 26% from 1959, common-market exports up 37%. But British exports were up just 17%. British imports have been growing faster than exports all year, and the May balance with the U.S. was the worst of all--exports to the U.S. up 7.4%, imports up a startling 95.6%. Britain's trade deficit hit $168 million in May, $272 million in June."Frightening," says Lord Rootes, chairman of the Dollar Exports Council (and of Rootes Motors, whose Hillman Minx has been hard-hit by U.S. compacts). "We who pride ourselves on being a great trading nation are simply falling behind."

Prosperity at home is still running high, and unemployment is a negligible 1.4% of the work force. But this is part of the trouble. Manufacturers find it all too easy to sell to the domestic market. When it comes to competing abroad, noted The Economist, "the British nowadays have an old fogy's habit of treating the sometimes brash, brassy and rather fanatical export drives of some of their main competitors as a superior sort of a joke."

Chancellor of the Exchequer Derick Heathcoat Amory moved to cut domestic consumption last April by imposing stiff restrictions on installment buying. He followed through last month by raising the bank rate to an anti-inflationary 6%. And Prime Minister Harold Macmillan began a series of pep talks designed to spur sales abroad. "We have always been merchant adventurers," he told a London audience of 400 top businessmen last week. "That is our tradition. I urge you to recruit your fellows into those noble ranks." He noted that "our German friends have coined a word, Exportfreudigkeit, or roughly 'export joy,' " and he invited his blue-chip audience to get out and learn what it means.

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