NFPA Annual Meeting

By aiming for the "big target" of world markets, the United States can achieve the same strong position in world softwood trade that the Persian Gulf countries now hold in oil, George H. Weyerhaeuser, president of the Weyerhaeuser Co., told NFPA's 73rd annual meeting in Washington, D.C.

Weyerhaeuser declared that the world wood market "can double in absolute demand within a 30-year period," providing "tremendous opportunities" for the North American forest industry. He said the industry in the U.S. and Canada has the capability of meeting that soaring future demand, "and to meet it in ways that increase rather than threaten, world stability."

A record number of wood products manufacturers and distributors, timber growers and others attending the fourday National Forest Products Assn. meeting also heard a leading House member warn on legislative proposals to control wood exports. Rep. Thomas J. Foley (D-Wash.), chairman of the House Agriculture Committee, said he is concerned that the United States. "which earned $22 billion last year in the export of agricultural products, including timber products, is going to be asked in some quarters to prevent entirely any export of federally-cut timber.

Foley also warned that Congress appears reluctant to move ahead in stimulating the type of management and development progrirms necessary to provide the timber that will be needed in coming decades.

In her first address to a major industrial association since becoming Secretary of Housing and Urban Development, Carla A. Hills said the Ford Administration is unwilling to spend large amounts of money on such measures as mortgage interest subsidies. "We know that we cannot spend our way out of the housing slump without inviting a new and more crippling inflationary spiral-in which housing would be the first to suffer," she said.

Dr. Bernard J. Frieden, director, Massachusetts Institute of Technology-Harvard University Joint Center for Urban Studies, reported that an earlier estimate that 23 million housing units will be needed in the United States this decade is holding up despite the current housing slump. He said there is a "reasonable chance" that the forecast, made in an intensive MlT-Harvard study in 1973,wlll be close to actual production by 1980, provided there is not another downturn later in the decade-

NFPA President M.C. Colvin emphas2ed the theme of the meeting, "Policies for Progress," by offering a sevenpoint program for adoption as policies for progress, which would: (l) overhaul and restructure the NFPA funding system; (2) recruit more astute and ambitious young people as "our executives for tomorrow;" (3) solidify NFPA's ties with allied groups concerned with housing; (a) find common ground for progress with the environmentalists: (5) close ranks behind an industry-wide slogan, '"!Ve are all tree farmers;" (6) hammer away at understanding in Congress, the Administration, special interest groups and the public at large that the industry's needs for an increased timber supply are critical to the national welfare, and (7) emphasize "wood power" in world trade, and appoint a new NFPA standing committee on foreign trade.

A special committee proposed a coordinated effort by (Please turn to page 2c )