by an approved method. Such a certified product will then be acceptable without further test or question in all member nations of the group. This seemingly complicated system for international approval of products could actually greatly simplify and facilitate trade, especially in products of high technological content. How far this plan will go is not ascertainable at this time. The European Economic Community (EEC) has already proposed over twenty major products or product areas to which applicability of the plan will be studied. Many of these are areas in which the United States has a large export trade. Again, it must be emphasized that the plan does not require adherence to a particular measurement system and the U.S. could probably belong, if it is willing to meet the other requirements relating to product evaluation and certification. Examination of the dynamic environment would be incomplete without a look at the domestic scene, including some earlier unsuccessful efforts to improve U.S. participation and effectiveness in international standards. D. American National Standards Institute (ANSI) In 1966 the USA Standards Institute, now known as ANSI, was established. This provided an impetus for increased U.S. participation in ISO and IEC activities, and this participation has grown to the point where ANSI states that at the present time "The U.S. is represented in all ISO committees where the U.S. industrial interest provides reasonable justification." Other aspects of ANSI involvement deserve attention. 1. Participation in ISO committee activities by itself is not enough; it must be effective. Effectiveness can only be determined by a complete analysis on a committee-by-committee basis. 2. Private support by member companies pays for ANSI operations, but this support is diminishing and there appears to be a lack of understanding among these members of the administrative costs faced by ANSI in support of technical delegations to the ISO and IEC. Also, ANSI enjoys neither government financial support nor the official recognition that is characteristic of its counterparts in other nations. In countries such as France, Germany, and the U.K., for example, the government provides such support and official recognition to its standards institution. 3. Due to the financial squeeze, participation in some 25 technical committees is being reviewed to see how many can be dropped or curtailed along with several secretariats. The United States now participates in 91 of the 131 ISO committees.8 4. ANSI is primarily responsive to the needs of its voluntary industrial and other memberships and is not subject to government regulation or control in connection with voluntary standards, an arrangement that has the advantage of greater flexibility. 5. At the present time in the United States there is not sufficient authority vested in the standards-making organizations or representatives of industry who work and negotiate in international standards activities to commit the 8 See appendix 4. nation to modify its standards constructively with ISO or IEC standards recommendations. In many instances, U.S. participants approve ISO standards which do not conform to U.S. domestic standards because the U.S. participants recognize the need for an international standard for use by other countries. In some instances, the international standard may be inferior to the U.S. standard. In other instances, it may have more severe requirements than are felt to be necessary in the U.S. And in still other cases the metric aspects of the standard may not be at all applicable in the U.S. market place. In general, there is a laissez faire attitude on the part of U.S. participants. E. Legislation Serious, but unsuccessful, attempts within the Congress have been made in the last few years to provide better support for U.S. participation in the development of international standards. On August 30, 1966, H.R. 17424 was introduced in the 89th Congress, 2nd Session. An identical bill, H.R. 17598, was introduced on September 8, 1966. In the Senate, S.3791 was introduced on August 31, 1966. The declared purpose of these bills was "to promote and support adequate representation for United States interests in voluntary international commercial standardization activities and to authorize the establishment and support of appropriate central information clearinghouses for commercial or procurement standards and standards activities for the benefit of producers, distributors, users, consumers, and the general public." Hearings were held on the House bills by an ad hoc Subcommittee of the Committee on Science and Astronautics on September 20, 21, and 22, 1966. Dr. J. Herbert Hollomon, Assistant Secretary of Commerce for Science and Technology, testified in favor of this legislation on September 20, 1966 (the transcript of his comments appears on pages 8-27 of the record of the hearings). The Committee, however, did not report out either of the bills. Again, in 1967 bills were introduced in the 90th Congress (S.997, H.R. 1213 and H.R. 6278). No action, however, was taken on these bills. In each of the annual submissions by the National Bureau of Standards to the Department of Commerce from 1965 to 1969 on proposed legislative items, support was voiced for passage of legislation to promote greater U.S. involvement in international standards activities. In late 1968 the proposed legislation was redrafted in the form of a concurrent resolution of the Congress. The resolution would express the sense of the Congress that the U.S. should participate vigorously in international standardization activities to promote compatibility between voluntary international standards and the standards followed in this country, and thereby facilitate broad domestic access to international trade. To date, the proposed legislation has not been submitted to the Congress. IV. EVALUATION AND CONCLUSIONS Because of the stress on international trade to be found in the legislative history of the Metric Study Act, an analysis of some pertinent statistics will be helpful. In 1969, the Gross National Product (GNP) of the United States was $931 billion; exports were $38 billion and imports were $36 billion. U.S. exports thus amount to approximately 4% of the GNP. Comparable figures for other nations show a much larger percentage involvement in foreign trade: Japan, 9.6%; England, 16%; W. Germany, 14.5%; France, 11.5%. In absolute amount, however, the U.S. leads the world. An attempt has been made to estimate the fraction of imports and exports that could be considered measurement-standards sensitive. In terms of what are considered reasonable criteria to the Metric Study Group, some 455 classes of manufacturing from the Standard Industrial Code (SIC) have been identified as measurement-standards sensitive. Examination of trade statistics shows that these 455 classes accounted for $11 billion of exports and $4 billion of imports in 1969. Thus, in terms of exports and imports that are measurement-standards sensitive, there was a favorable balance of $7 billion for the U.S. in 1969. There is clearly much at stake in the export and import of these kinds of products, although the extent to which the measurement-standards factor affects the trade balance is unknown. The U.S. Metric Study is currently surveying a sample comprising 750 firms in these 455 SIC categories to see how these firms in their expert judgment assess the impact of measurements and standards in their foreign trade. In addition to the question of international trade, certain other factors. need to be considered. These may be grouped into three related, but somewhat independent, categories, as was pointed out in chapter III. (1) Those that relate to the measurement language. (2) Those that relate to standards development and harmonization. An understanding of the relationships between these three goups is essential to a proper interpretation of the events and trends that have occurred in the world of measurement and standards. INFLUENCE OF COMMON LANGUAGE ON STANDARDS Having a common measurement language based on identical units encourages standards harmonization but does not insure it. For example, in the electrical field, where there has been complete international agreement on the units to be used, differences in practice and convention continue to cause difficulties. These would not disappear, even if the United States were to convert to metric throughout the society, because in the electrical field the U.S. is already metric. Thus, despite universal metric usage in the electrical field, there are different electrical standards in the world. U.S. delegates have had to persist in arguing against provisions in standards that would favor the 50 hertz (cycles per second) and 220 volt electrical distribution system commonly used in Europe, just as they have had to argue for equal treatment of the inch and the meter. Thus, in spite of the common measurement language (both sides of the Atlantic use the hertz and the volt), the U.S. emerged with a 60 hertz, 110 volt system. With the extensive body of practice that has built up around each, changing either would involve a whole continent. This is a clear case where international agreement was needed before practices became firmly established around separate national standards, and yet there was no difference in measurement language. The world now lives with two sets of electrical standards, both based on the metric system, and manufacturers must meet each if they wish to deal in both markets. Differences in such things as symbols, wire color conventions, and instruction manuals continue to cause problems that could discriminate against products manufactured in the United States. Sometimes these differences are not resolved. European and American color television standards are a good example. Differences in these standards were dramatically emphasized when satellite communication became possible. Complex converters had to be introduced to allow interchange of programs. Moreover, U.S. television programs cannot be taped here and fed directly into transmitters of European origin. One important U.S. industrial executive has asserted that the failure of the Europeans to adopt a color television system compatible with ours cost U.S. industry many millions of dollars. Different attitudes toward acceptable levels of risk in safety standards may result in such divergent points of view that the issuance of a safety standard may be long delayed, or permanently stalled. Although engineering standards are supposedly developed by resolving purely technical questions, in fact they are arrived at through the reconciliation of conflicting economic |