The_Open_Door_deel1

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Liberia proved abortive. However, Firestone's attitude was not
unprecedented as already in 1951 the Firestone Plantations Company
had put pressure upon the Liberian Government to conclude
a trade agreement with Spain (to supply the company's factory
in that country with Liberian rubber) (69).
After new talks in Akron in October 1969 between the Liberian
Secretary of Treasury, J. Milton Weeks, and Firestone officials,
the former left the U.S.A. with the impression that Firestone
agreed to build a tyre plant with a capacity of 55,000 tyres a
year and involving an expenditure of $ 6 million. If the
Liberian Government were to reach the trade agreements with
Sierra Leone and the Ivory Coast an additional $ 2.5 million
would be expended toincrease the plant's capacity to 125,000
tyres (70). However, one month later Firestone communicated
that it merely wanted to undertake another feasibility study
(71). The correspondence which subsequently developed between
the two parties showed the feelings of disappointment and
exasperation of prominent liberian Government officials while
the Firestone company's attitude was increasingly insulting.
The climax was reached when the company's managers, now under
heavy pressure from the President himself, William Tubman,
submitted another proposal in May 1970 which reduced all previous
proposals to the creation of a satellite (plant) of the
Firestone-owned tyre plant in Ghana, with a capacity on only
47,000 tyres a year and involving a $ 3 million investment
whilst employing 38 persons of whom 28 would be unskilled. It
would produce only passenger-car and light truck tyres, and
its raw material component...would be imported from Ghana.
The Firestone Tire and Rubber Company besides the usual investment
incentives with respect to import duty exemptions
and a tax holiday demanded the exclusive right to import
tyres into the country together with an embargo for an indefinite
time period on such type of tyres as would be produced
locally (72).
The indignation aroused by this proposal led among other things
to the personal intervention of President William Tubman. In a
letter to Raymond C. Firestone (dated June 12, 1970) which was
hand-delivered in Akron, U.S.A. by his son, William V.S. Tubman,
Jr., and the Economic Advisor to the President, Lafayette K.
Morgan, he expressed his anger about the proposal and reaffirmed
the Government's willingness to encourage the establishment of
a tyre factory by Firestone in Liberia. As Firestone had stated
that a 55,000 tyre factory would not be economically feasible,
the Government then proposed to share in a loss that would be
sustained by a tyre factory with that capacity, while maintaining
the investment incentive of a tax holiday of least ten
years.
The angry letter of President Tubman and the general feelings
provoked by the proposal of Firestone resulted in a new, and
final proposal. Late in 1970 (October) the Firestone Tire &
Rubber Company proposed the establishment of a factory with a