Hello, Dollar!

Considering Charles de Gaulle's loudly clarioned contempt for most things American, the French are becoming increasingly considerate of at least one U.S. product: the Yankee dollar.

As recently as 1962, 140 U.S. corporations made their first capital investments in France. Then De Gaulle's government, describing the American companies as "monsters" trying to turn France into an economic slaveling, put on restrictions deliberately aimed at discouraging U.S. investment in France. Last year only 30 U.S. firms cared to penetrate De Gaulle's wall. Because of French obstacles, General Motors put a new, 5,000-job auto-assembly plant in Antwerp instead of Alsace. Phillips Petroleum shifted a proposed polyethylene factory from Bordeaux to Belgium. Ford is about to build a new production complex a few miles across the French border in West Germany; from there it can sell into France almost as well as if it were inside the country, thanks to the Common Market's dissolving tariff barriers.

Renewed Welcome. For all his chauvinism, De Gaulle could hardly watch calmly while all those Yankee dollars went to other countries. Last January, when former Premier Michel Debre took over the Economics Ministry, the word was passed that France once again would welcome American investment. Thus Chicago-based Motorola has just won official permission to build a multimillion-dollar plant at Toulouse to make transistors, diodes and integrated circuits. International Telephone & Telegraph Corp. recently received approval for a semiconductor factory at Colmar, and the French subsidiary of Caterpillar got authority in mid-March to double the size of its Grenoble tractor factory. Though the French still consider some industries off limits for foreign capital--among them, defense, steel, chemicals and some types of electronics--the Ministry of Economics and Finance so far this year has not turned away a single U.S. firm that is seeking to invest or expand in France.

U.S. companies, of course, are learning how to flavor their deals more to the French taste. Motorola, for instance, will build in a depressed area where the government has a hard time persuading its own industry to go. Of the plant's 500 workers, 20% will do technological research, in which France lags. Half their output is to be exported.

Reverse Chauvinism. On the other side of the coin, no special restrictions stand in the way of direct French investment in U.S. firms, which now stands close to $200 million, plus at least $1 billion worth of stock-and-bond holdings. State-controlled Compagnie Francaise des Petroles, the ninth largest oil company in the world, has just bought one-third of Leonard Refineries, Inc., a Michigan-based independent oil company with 800 retail outlets and 1,200 miles of pipeline, as an entering wedge into the rich U.S. market. Petroles plays the game with some reverse chauvinism based on its European brand name. Total: its Delaware subsidiary, which bought into Leonard, is called Total American.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.