number 1 - Centre d'études et de recherches européennes Robert ...

32
John Gillingham
over tax on steel output that covered its operating expenses, while companies
could, and did, resort to either conventional or government financing. In fact, the
HA soon began to run up embarrassing surpluses, never borrowed the full $100
million available to it, and indeed soon found itself in the enviable position of looking
for constructive ways to spend the money. 39
The purposes to which it was put continued to be a source of worry. Monnet,
with Dulles' encouragement, refused categorically to accept Treasury demands for
project-by-project review. 40 This presented real problems, as the astute Camp, now
attached to the Foreign Operations Administration, warned in December 1953:
"The High Authority has, as yet, (she emphasized) made no strong move against
the powerful coal and steel cartels known to be operating within the Community."
Camp added that the investment policy of the High Authority was not to expand
but lower costs in the steel industry by re-equipping the mills and raising productivity
in the coal and iron ore mines. 41 The funds could, in other words, create
serious and possibly unfair competition for American industry. To deflect this kind
of criticism, Monnet channelled as much as possible of the American loan into the
construction of socially desirable company housing. 42 Thus a Republican government
found itself in the awkward position of perpetuating a way of doing business
it was committed to eliminating and subsidizing in Europe the kind of program it
opposed at home.
The American loan episode was an embarrassment but little more; the amounts
involved were trifling in comparison to the overall aid flow. It nevertheless aroused
suspicions that, in spite of the heroic pretentions of the Monnetists, the CSC was,
"at bottom", a fraud. This, in so many words, was the conclusion of the Dodge
Memorandum. It issued from the special committee that undertook the most
important policy review of the Eisenhower years, the Council on Foreign Economic
Policy (CFEP). Its voluminous reports documented beyond the shadow of a
doubt that far from de-cartelizing, Western European heavy industry was rapidly
re-cartelizing. 43
Summoned to Washington to justify this state of affairs, Albert Coppé, a member
of the High Authority, made no denial but explained the persistence of restrictive
practices as the result of tradition, and, though promising action in the future,
refused to use the US loan as a lever for reform. 44 The State Department's definitive
response of 28 October 1955 to the CFEP queries, though hedged in ambi-
39. J. GILLINGHAM, Coal, Steel, and the Rebirth of Europe, pp. 330, 340-342, 350.
40. FRUS 1952-1954/VI "Memorandum by the Deputy Assistant of State for European Affairs (Bonbright)
to the Acting Secretary of State", 4 February 1954.
41. FRUS 1952-1954/VI "Memorandum by the Officer in Charge of Economic Organization Affairs
(Camp) to the Assistant Director for Policy and Planning, Office of the Director of Foreign Oerations
Administration (Gordon)", 18 December 1953.
42. J. GILLINGHAM, Coal, Steel and the Rebirth of Europe, p. 343.
43. FRUS 1955-1957/IV, "Memorandum from the Assistant Secretary of State for Economic Affairs
(Waugh) to the Undersecretrary of State (Hoover)", 14 February 1955.
44. FRUS 1955-1957/IV "Memorandum of a Conversation. Department of State, Washington, April
20, 1955".