The postwar drive to liberalize trade, increase competition, and thereby improve productivity within Western Europe has met with determined opposition, as have similar attempts at reducing trade barriers in the United States. This resistance has come from a variety of groups which fear that their interests will be jeopardized as a result of keener competition, and its magnitude can hardly be overestimated. Indeed, it probably constitutes the major single barrier to European economic unification. Certainly, it can no longer be passed off with lectures on the virtues of competition, mobility of the factors of production, and international division of labor.