WORLD TRADE Feeding Western Europe

Off the Panamanian freighter El Corral and onto Pier 27 in Belgium's port of Antwerp last week tramped 867 head of Texas cattle -on a one-way trip. They were the forerunners of a U.S. attempt to successfully export U.S. beef on the hoof to Europe, which has long had a prejudice against more easily transported frozen beef. The cattle were not the only American arrivals in European ports. U.S. farm exports are pouring into the Common Market at so fast a pace that they have become a major point of discord at Kennedy Round meetings between the U.S. and the Big Six, which fear that lower European tariffs can only result in an even greater flood of U.S. goods.

Giving a vast assist to the U.S. balance of payments (see U.S. BUSINESS), U.S. farmers last year exported to Western Europe $1.4 billion worth of everything from soybeans to turkeys, and so far this year have matched that record pace. Helped along by European shortages of beef and pork, exports of U.S. meat have gone from $51 million to $74 million in a year. Tobacco and cotton have swung upward from $236 million to $295 million. The greatest increase was in animal feeds (from $521 million to $672 million), which ironically can only serve to reduce U.S. meat sales. Even now, U.S. feed may be helping to fatten France's excellent Charolais cattle, which were bred, like Charles de Gaulle's force de frappe, to give France a louder voice at the world's conference tables, be they in the palaces of Geneva or the stockyards of Chicago.

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