Chapter 40: Charity as a Shell

Photos of Seryosha shaking hands with the commerce minister have been the top news in the media these days. Pen, fun, pavilion www. biquge。 info This also poses a huge challenge for the incumbent president's team, which is busy with the general election. Because the incumbent president, Ronald Reagan, is admired by voters for being tough on the Soviet Union, the handshake can easily lead to misunderstandings about Reagan's policies. The Secretary of Commerce reported to the President the truth of the incident that night. Reagan immediately summoned his aides to discuss the matter, and the aides were inclined to think that this might be a sign that the Soviets wanted to reconcile and that Mr. President should respond somewhat, but this should only be done in secret, preferably after the election.

The White House did not care about Seryosha, who was now busy doing his duty as an official of the Soviet Ministry of Foreign Trade and Economic Cooperation, trying to sell Soviet products to overseas countries. In addition to this, Seryosha also arranged for Boris to acquire the Plaza Hotel. Because he heard that the current owner of the Plaza Hotel, Hilton Hotels Group, was negotiating the purchase of another pearl of the hotel industry, the Waldorf Astoria Hotel. They are likely to sell the Plaza Hotel to raise funds, and Seryosha doesn't want to pass up this opportunity.

As the number of projects reached for initial cooperation gradually increased, Seryosha's energy was somewhat insufficient. He spoke on the phone with Gorbachev, who was pleased with his performance in New York, but General Secretary Chernenko also hoped that he would be able to communicate substantively. Seryosha understood that he had successfully helped Gorbachev make a name for himself in the diplomatic arena. If Gorbachev can seize this opportunity, then there should be no one to stand in the way of a visit to Britain. This was a major victory for Gorbachev in the internal struggle.

The five-day conference ended quickly, during which time he met many business and political people from all over the world. Originally, Seryosha was supposed to return home immediately after the meeting, but General Secretary Chernenko thought that he should stay in the United States for a while longer to see if the US government could get more positive feedback. So Seryosha continued to stay in the United States.

Due to Seryosha's diplomatic breakthrough, Gromyko had to cooperate with Seryosha's actions against his will. The embassy in the United States has arranged for several staff members to assist Seryosha in his work here. They contacted Seryosha with a number of well-known American personalities friendly to the Soviet Union to build momentum for Seryosha's platform. Among them, Seryosha is best known as Comrade Hammer, but the most impressive thing for Seryosha is the American child star of Samanta Smith, who became famous for writing letters to Andropov and receiving a handwritten reply from Andropov, and also visited the Soviet Union. But to be honest, Seryosha doesn't think that the ideas of these people can sway the U.S. government and the people.

Now Glencore has taken over all the companies related to the grain industry in Seryosha's hands except Monsanto, and with Mark Ritchie's business connections, Mark Richie introduced Seryosha to the American Farmers Alliance. Truth be told, it's a lot more useful than that child star.

Since the American Farmers Union is a non-governmental organization, Seryosha and their contacts are not hindered by the U.S. government. Seryosha went in the name of inspecting agricultural production in the United States, but Seryosha was actually there to negotiate business. The American Farmers Alliance may seem grassroots, but in fact it is extremely powerful. It actually protects the interests of large American farmers, and the greatest protection of this interest comes from the USDA's price protection program for members of the American Farmers Alliance. Under the plan, when the price of grain falls below a certain amount in the market, the USDA will protectively store the grain of the Farmers' Union at a price above the market price. Then when the price of grain in the market recovers, the Ministry of Agriculture will sell. In this way, both the farmer and the Ministry of Agriculture are profitable. Even all the time, this business has gradually become a small treasury within the Ministry of Agriculture. But this small treasury is about to be destroyed by the grain embargo measures imposed by the United States, which has been imposing sanctions on the Soviet Union, Iran, and Eastern Europe for several years. In addition, the United States has been able to harvest bumper crops year after year, and grain prices have fallen again and again, which has made the Department of Agriculture's storage plan almost bankrupt. If we do not find a way out of these grains as soon as possible, then these grain stores will cause the Ministry of Agriculture to lose a lot of money.

Against this background, Seryosha wanted to import American wheat and barley indirectly through the American Farmers Union. You know, the subsidies from the Ministry of Agriculture are all appropriations approved by Congress, and there are only so many of them every year. Agricultural subsidies are now taking up a lot of congressional appropriations, so as long as they can handle the food they have on hand, and as long as Mark Ritchie doesn't make much of a fuss about shipping the grain directly to the Soviet Union, then the Department of Agriculture can turn a blind eye.

After talking to Seryosha and Mark Ritchie and his friends within the American Farmers Union, a bold plan began to emerge. The two sides purchased food from the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) in the name of a private charity and shipped it to Africa to help with the famine there. In fact, most of the grain was sent to the Soviet Union in exchange for oil. Because this is a philanthropic cause, it will not be censored by the U.S. Department of Trade. Therefore, it will be much safer in actual operation.

Seryosha targeted Somalia and Ethiopia on the Mediterranean coast, and since they were on the east coast of Africa, the shipping routes would pass through the Mediterranean, and Seryosha would only have to dock the fleet at an Italian port to load grain onto a Soviet ship. Of course, Seryosha will not transport nothing to Somalia and Ethiopia, because then it would be too obvious. The superficial article that should be done still needs to be done.

Once the general outline of the plan was outlined, Seryosha asked Mark Ritchie to have his friends intervene in the matter. Seryosha returned to the Soviet Union with anxious Emirati customers. He sent a report to Gorbachev, saying that the situation here will not continue to operate until after the US election, and the time is not yet ripe. Gorbachev conveyed Seryosha's opinion to General Secretary Chernenko for the first time, and General Secretary Chernenko reluctantly agreed with Seryosha's idea.

Before returning home, Seryosha made a special phone call to Tonya and asked him to send his Tu-144D passenger plane to the United States to pick up Seryosha and his Emirati guests back to the Soviet Union.