Mosbacher Would Relax Laws to Meet Competition

Robert A. Mosbacher, the Bush Administration’s nominee for commerce secretary, told a Senate committee Tuesday that he would favor relaxing U.S. antitrust laws to allow American companies to work together to meet foreign competition in high-technology products.

Testifying at a confirmation hearing before the Senate Commerce, Science and Transportation Committee, Mosbacher warned that American industry is losing out to European and Japanese companies in developing superconductors and high-definition video receivers.

He pledged to strictly enforce new provisions in the 1988 trade law for retaliation against unfair trade practices by other nations and to take other steps to boost U.S. exports.

With the decline in the dollar’s value in recent years, “we have an opportunity to . . . open up to a greater extent the rest of the world for our goods and services and this we must push,” he said. If other countries do not open their markets, “we would have no recourse but to strongly, fairly, totally enforce . . . the trade act.”

Mosbacher’s get-tough message was exactly the kind that committee members wanted to hear after last year’s lengthy congressional struggle to set a stronger U.S. trade stance. The Texas businessman seems certain to win unanimous committee approval in a vote next Tuesday, with action by the full Senate expected shortly thereafter.

Replying to a question from Sen. Lloyd Bentsen (D-Tex.), Mosbacher stressed that the government should be willing to give the U.S. high-tech industry a boost because the nation is “losing the advantage we started out with” in superconductors and high-definition videos.

“What we might do is allow more consortia to form, more unified work, so the private sector could work together without government interference,” he said.

Mosbacher suggested that present antitrust exemptions could be expanded to “allow companies to work together . . . in actual manufacturing” of products in this field. Exemptions currently allow such cooperation only in research and development of new products, new materials and new production techniques.

Semiconductor manufacturers have banded together with U.S. blessing in a not-for-profit research consortium.