The first full outline of the new trade legislation that Congress will consider this year came last week in a speech by House Ways and Means Chairman Wilbur Mills and the first annual report of President Nixon's Council on International Economic Policy. The two sets of proposals are mirror images of each other—and they add up to what could be called a trust-Nixon bill. The proposals cannot be characterized as either free trade or protectionist; they would give the President unprecedented authority to move just about as far as he chose in either direction.
Mills' stated belief is that the...