Marina van Whitman

While the stridency that has increasingly characterized North-South economic relations was somewhat muted in 1978, the tensions that have troubled economic relations between the industrialized nations in recent years were sharpened. This increase in tensions was largely a spillover into the international arena of unresolved problems of domestic economic management. Slow growth, sluggish investment and persistently high rates of unemployment and excess productive capacity continued in most major industrialized countries; only the United States sustained its recovery pace of growth from the sharp recession of 1974-75.