TRADE: Cutting the List

The London Times went so far as to call it "a forward outpost of the McCarthyist outlook," and few foreign businessmen thought that the strict U.S.-inspired embargo on "strategic" goods to Communist lands made too much sense. The embargo, they argued, had not noticeably stunted Russia's industrial growth; it tended to make Red China more and more dependent on the Soviet Union, and it deprived Western nations of much-needed markets. Over the years, bit by bit, the U.S. has had to give in to such pressure. Last week, after five months of arguing, the Coordinating Committee (COCOM) of European...

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