There was a time when the word "multinationals" was used as a synonym for U.S. corporations overseas. Jacques Servan-Schreiber, a French journalist, created a name for himself with his 1968 bombshell The American Challenge. The main thesis of the book was that the U.S. multinational corporations, the MNCs (or as they are called in Europe, the "multis"), were rapidly becoming a very significant economic power in Europe with equally significant socioeconomic repercussions. Schreiber's contention was that these corporations were controlling a substantial part of the European economy, thereby making it exceedingly difficult, if not impossible, for Europeans to start up, develop, and run their own corporations. If the situation continued unchecked, Schreiber argued, U.S. multinationals would become the third world power after the United States and the U.S.S.R. Schreiber concluded his book by advising European management to form alliances of the largest European corporations to compete with the U.S. MNCs.
The decade following the appearance of Schreiber's book witnessed numerous attacks on U.S. multinationals. These attacks came not only from the traditional "natural enemies" of the MNCs—the host countries—but from critics here at home. Indeed, in the seventies the U.S. Congress created a committee for the investigation of the behavior of the U.S. multinationals. The Church Committee, named after the late senator from Idaho, Frank Church, was originally charged with investigating allegations that ITT had conspired to overthrow the Chilean government, but it extended its mandate, taking upon itself an investigation of MNC dealings all over the world.
At the peak of these investigations, many MNCs mounted their own counterattacks. ITT, the original protagonist in this drama, commissioned Pierre Salinger to interpret for the company's own internal publication, Profile, a survey of public opinion on U.S. multinationals performed in the mid-seventies. The businesspeople and professionals who were polled in six European countries—Austria, Britain, France, Italy, Norway, and Spain—told reporters that even though they were overwhelmingly critical of MNCs, they did "like their money."
Similar publications and even educational films were produced and distributed to anyone concerned with the issue of MNC behavior by almost all U.S. and European MNCs, including Exxon, GMC, Ford, Sears, NCR, Mobile, Caterpillar, Union Carbide, Deere, Dow, Philips, Shell, Unilever, and Nestle.
The main objective of this corporate effort was to educate the general public and especially congresspeople and their staffs on the devastating effects of this "unnecessary concern" with the behavior of the MNCs on their ability to compete in world markets. Speaking to an audience at the 1975 World Trade Conference in Chicago, Lee Morgan, president of Caterpillar, said of the main thesis expressed by Barnet and Müller in Global Reach,
It challenges the very premise on which we base our economy and our actions—the premise that free, private enterprise represents man's most effective tool for identifying, producing, and distributing the world's economic assets, in a manner responsive to man's needs .... We have an obligation to refute the inaccurate portrayal of our goals and behavior. Let's convert this challenge to an opportunity, an opportunity to achieve greater public knowledge about the constructive role we play in a changing interdependent world.
Preoccupied with what Professor Vernon called "the storm over multinationals," most Americans did not notice the gradual increase in the "U.S. invasion" by foreign multinationals. Suddenly, at the beginning of the eighties, stories began to appear in the media about a takeover of the United States by multinational corporations from overseas. Virtually overnight the concept of international investment in reverse became the subject of numerous conferences, workshops, and even congressional hearings.
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