Since the beginning of detente in the sixties the United States' economic policy toward the Soviet Union has steered a zig-zag course. The latest spectacular step was President Reagan's lift - apparently without an adequate quid pro quo - of the embargo on grain and phosphates imposed by his...

In August the Soviet government agreed to the second one-year extension of the US-USSR grain agreement, which has regulated grain trade between the two countries since 1976. Although a net exporter of grain for the best part of this century, the USSR has become increasingly dependent on imports...