> I would love for the next administration,
regardless of the party, to say, "We're going to adopt metric-only labelling on our products, to make things easier for every other country in the world to trade with us.".
Completely the wrong way to promote such a change. Indeed, why should a government go through an expensive upheaval just to make things easier for other countries ? This will never fly.
Rather, you need to convince people that it's worth changing to metric because it makes American industry more efficient, and allow it to complete more aggressively with other exporters. People aren't going to want the government to cause them inconvenience to help foreigners at the best of times, and in the current international climate are even less likely to be sympathetic to this idea. The whole point is to pitch the benefit of metrication to the US, not to everyone else. Were I to adopt a completely selfish European perspective, I'd say we'd probably be better off if you continued to lumber your industry with out of date and cumbersome measurement requirements.
As for the metric-only labelling directive, the emphasis here is that it *reduces* the amount of labelling rules, not increases it. Whereas currently you must provide metric and you must provide colonial, after the proposed change you have reduced the colonial component to an option, and have not changed the metric requirement at all. Play to the get-the-government-off-our-backs lobby.
And keep referring to it as colonial, not "US Customary". There is nothing American about this system - it was imposed on you when you a colony, and just as you rid yourselves of monarchs, pounds and taxation-without-representation, this remnant of your former occupation is long past retirement.
--------------------------------------------------------- Tom Wade | EMail: tee dot wade at eurokom dot ie EuroKom | Tel: +353 (1) 296-9696 A2, Nutgrove Office Park | Fax: +353 (1) 296-9697 Rathfarnham | Disclaimer: This is not a disclaimer Dublin 14 | Tip: "Friends don't let friends do Unix !" Ireland
