Business Groups Launch Coalition on Trade Talks

Some of the nation’s top corporations and business groups Tuesday announced a coalition aimed at shoring up foundering international trade talks, which they said are crucial in heading off global trade wars and a recession.

The Multilateral Trade Negotiations--or MTN--Coalition said it has the support of businesses and trade groups representing 13,000 companies.

The coalition’s chairmen, William Brock and Robert Strauss, former top U.S. trade negotiators, said the current round of GATT trade negotiations are the most crucial ever conducted but the public seems unaware of the stakes.

The coalition is aimed at strengthening the hand of U.S. Trade Representative Carla A. Hills in the forthcoming bargaining, Brock and Strauss said.

The coalition said its supporters include General Motors, American Telephone & Telegraph, General Electric, International Business Machines, American Express, the National Assn. of Manufacturers, the National Federation of Independent Business and the American Farm Bureau Federation.

Absent from the list of coalition supporters were labor organizations, which in recent years have questioned the benefits of an open trading system to the United States while other nations, especially Japan, impose barriers.

“Go out on the street and ask the first 100 people about the Uruguay round of trade negotiations, and not one person would know what you’re talking about,” Strauss said.