New York, Jan. 12—One of the matters concerning which the new Administration ought to express itself is the credit being extended to the Soviet Union for the purpose of (choose one) a) reorienting its economy to peacetime pursuits; or b) burying us. The capitalist community in America isn’t quite sure which of the two it will be, but, exercising its inclination to economic prudence, it appears to be betting on a).
The other day, in Nabvrezhnye Chelny, USSR, they opened up a trucking plant built, substantially, by United States technology and United States capital. A little perspective is in order. In 1970, the Russians invited Henry Ford to Moscow where he was treated like Marco Polo, and if anyone during the banquets held in his honor uttered a whispering word of derogation of the capitalist system, the offender was no doubt sent off to Gulag for ten years. But it did not work: on returning to the United States, Mr. Ford announced that his company would not build a truck plant for the Soviet Union. No doubt he was in part motivated by the flow of Russian truck traffic from North Vietnam to South Vietnam carrying ammunition for use against American soldiers. Capitalists aren’t dumb: the more American soldiers killed in Vietnam, you see, the fewer potential buyers of Ford cars.
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