FOREIGN TRADE: Welcome Mat

Foreign manufacturers trying to sell in the U.S. often have to worry not only about competitive pricing but about U.S. national security. U.S. electrical manufacturers have argued that foreign equipment could not be properly repaired and maintained in a national emergency, invoked national security to block the English Electric Co. from supplying turbines for the Greers Ferry Dam in Arkansas, even though English Electric’s bid was 17% lower than the contract winner, Baldwin Lima-Hamilton Corp. (TIME, Feb. 2). Last week the Office of Civil and Defense Mobilization ruled, in effect, that the national security argument can be carried too far.

OCDM rejected a petition by U.S. electrical equipment manufacturers to limit imports of foreign electrical equipment. Of the more than 30,000 pieces of electrical equipment installed in U.S. power installations from 1951 through 1958, said OCDM Director Leo A. Hoegh, only 284 were foreign made—and the problem of repairing them is only “hypothetical.”