Minnow into Barracuda

Maritime subsidies are also making the American shipbuilding industry--a relative minnow of global commerce, ranking only 14th in the world--look like a predatory barracuda to some Western Europeans. Shipbuilders in Europe have sent a plea for easy-term loans and other subsidies to the Common Market Council of Ministers, which will consider their request this week or next. The aid is needed, shipbuilders say, mostly to protect them against Japanese rivals, but also to ward off a competitive threat from what they call the "heavily subsidized" U.S. industry. American shipbuilders will get $425 million in Government help during fiscal 1973 to build liquefied natural-gas carriers and other modern ships. This surely must be the first time since World War II that the high-cost U.S. industry has been considered a danger to anyone. The Europeans' plea is also a melancholy example of how one subsidy inevitably leads to another.

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