I have been asked to comment on the US-Soviet trade agreement and the negotiations leading up to it. Negotiations began in December 1971, when Secretary of Commerce Stans made the first ministerial level contacts with the Soviet Union on trade and commercial matters. Soviet Foreign Trade Minister Patolichev returned the visit in May 1972, meeting with Stans’ successor, Peter Peterson. They got down to specifics on what each side wanted on trade matters. Then came the Summit Meeting and the adoption of “Basic Principles” of US-Soviet relations. In principle number seven, the two countries pledged that they would actively promote the growth of economic and commercial ties. The also agreed to establish a Joint Commercial Commission.

I shall address myself to controls on exports. And here, when the program talks about the “Legal Framework of East-West Trade,” it might more properly be called a “thicket” rather than a “framework.” At least ten pieces of legislation govern exports, but I shall focus on controls exercised by the Department of Commerce, since they affect the vast proportion of commodities in commercial transactions with the Communist countries. I shall not distinguish between the situation with regard to the People’s Republic of China and the Eastern European countries, because our published regulations make no such distinction.

Most people view our current relations with China as a sudden development but actually they were carefully planned and were one of the first orders of business when the Nixon Administration took office. The Administration considered various ways of establishing some mode for direct political contacts which would be more satisfactory than the Warsaw Talks. Those talks had been very productive; they were high-level negotiations. Although we had no diplomatic relations in a legal sense, we had more talks with the Chinese leadership over this ten-year period than did any other country. However, the talks had become stagnant and so we sought new modalities. Many small steps were taken in an effort to convince the Chinese that we were interested in establishing contacts with them, for example, allowing U.S. tourists to bring in more Chinese goods. At the time, only small steps were possible for during the crisis of the Cultural Revolution, with its attacks on foreign embassies, the Chinese were neither willing nor able to expand their foreign contacts. We have now reached the stage of establishing Liaison Offices in Washington and Peking, a step which would have been impossible four years ago.

I shall discuss some of the practical legal problems we have encountered in our efforts to trade with the Soviet Union and the Eastern European countries. I should like to say at the outset that ever since I began to work in this field in 1964, the U.S. Government has been very helpful. Within the framework of congressional export policy, the Department of Commerce has always endeavored to make allowance for the needs of the American businessman. The State Department has also been helpful; I recall in particular a really first-rate briefing by our embassy in Bucharest when East-West trade was a very new subject.

It has been observed that the international development effort is a form of secular religion. If this is so, we can say that the salvation it aspires to is the realization of human rights. Thus it is no surprise that the doctrine and dogma of development work, appearing in the secular guise of “theory” and “policy,” are intimately concerned with the problem of the relationship between economic development and the ultimate goal of human rights.

Is the Cuban Revolution “good?” This essay seeks to assess the performance of the Cuban revolutionary government as it prepares for its fifteenth birthday in January, 1974.

We will evaluate the revolutionary government’s performance on eight basic values of social life identified by Harold Lasswell and Abraham Kaplan, as modified partly by Karl Deutsch, and further modified for the purposes of this essay. Power is the participation in decisions about severe sanctions or the capacity to change the probability of outcomes. Enlightenment involves knowledge, insight, and access to information. Skill is the proficiency in the practice of any arts and crafts, in trades, or professions. Wealth is income, including both goods and services. Well-being includes both health and safety. Deference includes status, honor, recognition, prestige, glory, or reputation. Rectitude comprises moral values: virtue, goodness, righteousness, etc. Affection includes both love and friendship.

This is an interim, summary and provisional judgment on the Brazilian experiment of the past nine years, that is, since the military took power on April 1, 1964. To try to give an impression of the results of the interaction among the values of political democracy, equality, and economic growth, and the present levels compared with those of 1964 as well as what appear to be the trends. I have chosen six “indicators”:

1. (1) the autonomy and integrity of the legal system;

2. (2) torture and police brutality;

3. (3) freedom of the mass media;

4. (4) income distribution patterns;

5. (5) education distribution patterns; and

6. (6) the quality of life of the people of the city of greater São Paulo.