Think Big

At Detroit's prestigious Economic Club, hardly a limousine's length away from the National Auto Show, the titans of U.S. autodom last week heard some frank talk from one of their most successful foreign rivals. The outspoken visitor: handsome, hearty Heinz Nordhoff, 63. chairman of West Germany's Volkswagenwerk, which sells in the U.S. one out of every six cars it produces.

Nordhoff, who had come to the U.S. to dedicate the new $2,500,000 Volkswagen headquarters in New Jersey, noted that nary a Volkswagen was to be seen around Cobo Hall. "Well," said he genially, "this is a 'national' auto show, isn't it?" To a luncheon audience that included Henry Ford II, G.M. Chairman Frederic Donner and Chrysler's President Lynn Townsend, he urged U.S. and foreign automakers to make common cause in ending all trade barriers in the free world. "I look with the same great concern as you do on the protectionist thinking of certain high-tariff groups within the Common Market countries," said Nordhoff. "The Common Market is not something to be used as a third force between America and Russia. It is part of the free world . . . and the free world must trade as freely as it communicates, without selfish protection by economic boycotts against third parties--which is what tarrffs are."

Neither U.S. industry nor U.S. labor should fear free trade, Nordhoff argued. "Competition has made this country great. American competition will help make Europe great also." And then he gently suggested that maybe U.S. industry was not as alertly competitive as it might be. "This has been demonstrated to us at Volkswagen during the last half year. Out of 500 letters sent to companies in this country producing items we could use, over half were not even answered. Another 40% were answered, but the firms stated they were not interested. Only 10% seemed to want our business enough to respond positively to our letters."

In his own pursuit of freer trade, President Kennedy last week vetoed a proposal to double tariffs on imported bicycles. Such a reversion to protectionism, he explained, "would hamper our efforts to improve the position of American industry in foreign markets."

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