ABSTRACT
In modern conditions of cheap transport, highly specialised production, and the hope and expectation of a high standard of life, inter-regional and international trade and investment have come to play a far more important part than they did even a century ago. They have indeed become a necessity of life, or at any rate of life in the style and on the scale to which we are all rapidly becoming accustomed. In general, American willingness to enter into international trade has been increasing, and American tariffs dropping, since 1930. The prospect of economic gain, plus the competitive market, has in the past proved a tremendously powerful incentive to international and inter-regional trade and investment. But competition as a means of controlling international trade and investment turns out to have the same limits and defects as competition for any other purpose. Other countries have faced problems of conservation and basic services, on a much bigger scale.
