In August last year this Journal ([1979] 3 LMCLQ, at p. 420) referred to the criticism by Trade Secretary Mr John Nott of United States attempts to enforce anti-trust legislation beyond its national borders. This criticism developed into a Bill, the Protection of Trading Interests Bill, which was read for a second time in the House of Commons on Nov. 16. In presenting the Bill, Mr Nott said that the Government’s objective was to reassert and reinforce the defences of the United Kingdom against attempts by other countries to enforce their economic and commercial policies unilaterally in relation to international trade. He said that the U.S. had shown a tendency over the last three decades to try to mould the international economic and trading world in its own image.

It is true that the U.S. places great stress on free competition, and that it goes further than would most European countries in its use of the legislature and the courts to prevent any interference with free competition. American businessmen are constantly looking over their shoulders to see what the Justice Department is doing, and the present disagreement has arisen because the European businessman is also having to keep a wary eye on the Justice Department. In particular, the U.S. Federal Maritime Commission is seeking to control the freight rates charged by shipping lines operating between the U.K. and the U.S. We have seen the picture before. In the early 1960s a very similar complaint was being made, when the Federal Maritime Commission tried to control contracts of carriage made between British exporters and shipowners. The response then of the British Government was the “Shipping Contracts and Commercial Documents Act of 1964”, which empowered the Minister of Transport in some circumstances to prohibit compliance with measures of a foreign Government, and to prohibit the production of a document which was outside the jurisdiction of the requesting country. This Act seems, in fact, to have been little used, and is to be repealed by the proposed “Protection of Trading Interests Bill”.

On the second reading the Opposition spokesman, Mr John Smith, who is responsible for Trade, Prices and Consumer Protection, pointed out that the Bill might not be in the best interests of the U.K. It might trigger off counter measures, and it would be better to tackle those serious problems by discussion. His colleague, however, Mr Jeffrey Thomas, who speaks for the Opposition on legal affairs, said that the Bill should be regarded as a measure to foster international trade, although his party did have some apprehension about how the Bill would operate in practice. Presumably,