Business & Finance: Goodwill Gestures

Back to Europe last week—as secretively as they had arrived in the U. S. two weeks before—sailed the Earl of Dudley and a committee representing Europe’s Steel Cartel. Though no one admitted it, everybody knew that the Earl and his friends had visited the U. S. in an attempt to get U. S. steel companies to join the cartel or at least to stop undercutting its prices abroad (TIME, Feb. 14). Last week no one in authority would yet admit that anything had happened, but the Earl’s speedy departure indicated that an understanding had been reached. Only Manhattan’s Journal of Commerce ventured to outline this understanding:

“The International Steel Cartel and the Steel Export Association of America have decided on common export price levels for the ensuing fiscal, or cartel, year at lower levels than previously in effect. . . . Moreover, export quotas on some dozen steel commodities have been assigned to various member countries. Thus the U. S. has been assigned definite tonnages which it can sell monthly to Brazil, Argentina, Japan, China and other important steel-consuming countries. . . .”

At week’s end no steelmaster had yet denied these statements, nor the Journal’s added assertion: “The foreign delegation tendered an order for 20,000 tons of steel to two of the leading members of the Steel Export Association of America as a gesture of goodwill before leaving for home.”