The Bismarck Tribune

IRONY

Observers of world trade conditions say that American exporters are facing the most determined opposition they have yet encountered in foreign markets. European industries are equipped themselves to meet American competition as never before.

And here's how.

America, the bountiful, is lending millions to her European competitors.

The European competitors, equally obliging, are spending the money in America—but, for machinery more modern than that used by American manufacturers. The natural result is that European manufacturers have a decided advantage over American producers in foreign markets. In brief, we lend the Europeans American money to buy American machinery to undersell American manufacturers.

The trouble is, of course, that some American industries, especially the older ones, have not kept abreast of the advance in manufacturing equipment. The manufacturers of automobiles have not hesitated to scrap obsolete machinery. But some textile manufacturers, especially in New England, have been content to cling to their old equipment. American automobiles dominate the foreign markets. American textiles are meeting the keenest of competition from the Central European states, where mills have been modernized by American machinery.

It sometimes seems that in the matter of accommodating competitors we are willing not only to hang ourselves but furnish the rope as well.