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It is into such world markets that President Herbert Hoover wants Big U. S. Business to spread itself as a means of overcoming the stockmarket slump. For eight years as Secretary of Commerce he built up the foreign trade service which today periodically supplies exporters with a year-round Christmas list, a list of potential buying orders. His trade scouts flash into Washington such reports as U. S. Assistant Trade Commissioner Douglas Cook's last week from Berlin warning U. S. clockmakers of a merger in the cuckoo clock industry in the Black Forest.
That the work of trade scouts is highly successful is evidenced by the Department of Commerce's annual report made public last week. U. S. foreign trade increased over last year. Five and one-quarter million dollars worth of U. S. goods were exported, of which almost half was in finished manufactured articles. The U. S. now has the greatest export trade in the world. Most significant development: While exports to Europe increased only 8% over the pre-war average, to the rest of the world—especially South America, Asia and Africa—they have increased 265%.
Empire Builders. Last week if U. S. citizens in Russia were sad because the Soviet had just prohibited the cutting or display of Christmas trees, they could take heart when they learned that Gillette Safety Razor Co. had been granted a concession to build a plant in Russia with U. S. capital to supply safety razors and blades, at a profit, to shaggy Soviets and smooth tourists alike. It was the first large U. S. concession in Russia since the collapse of the Harriman manganese enterprise. Noted also was the fact that representatives of General Motors were dickering with Soviet officials for a similar privilege.
Automobile makers lead in foreign plants. Henry Ford has 25 foreign factories and assembly plants reaching from Alexandria to Yokohama, from Helsingfors to Lima. So potent is this influence that the League of Nations has thought it worth while to undertake for him a survey so that he may pay his workmen in foreign lands the local equivalent of his wages in the U. S. General Motors has 19 processing plants and five warehouses scattered from Warsaw to São Paulo, from Madrid to Batavia.
Advertisers. Americans abroad, even at Christmas time, do not feel so very far away from home when they peruse foreign newspapers and see in them advertisements of commodities familiar to every U. S. citizen. The U. S. agency doing the largest foreign business: J. Walter Thompson Co. with 15 overseas branches from Bombay to São Paulo, from Port Elizabeth to Warsaw. Products advertised: Coca Cola, General Motors (foreign), Goodrich Tires, Odorono, I. T. & T., et al.
Bankers. Behind this widespread network of U. S. trade stands an equally widespread system of U. S. banks doing an international business. Through them —leaders are Morgan, Chase National, Guaranty Trust—are sucked up the billions of dollars of U. S. money for loans to foreign countries which pay for purchase from the U. S. Most famed of U. S. financial colonizers: National City Bank of New York, with 22 branches in as many countries. Particularly potent is this bank in the Caribbean area, where it has entered the investment field (sugar in Cuba, railroads in Haiti).