Last summer fred hochberg, head of America's government-backed Export-Import Bank, joined the chief of Westinghouse on a sales trip in the Czech Republic. A Czech official, he recalls, told him they would not even consider Westing-house's bid to expand a nuclear power plant without finance from his bank. Russia's state-owned nuclear-energy company, Rosatom, had already offered to fund half the project. Mr Hoch-berg promised to do the same if Westinghouse, an American unit of Japan's Toshiba, won the bid. "It's time to drop the fantasy that a purely free market exists in the world of global trade," Mr Hochberg told an American audience shortly after returning from Prague. "In the real world our private enterprises are pitted against an array of competitors that are often government-owned, government-protected, government-subsidised, government-sponsored or all of the above." Russia was particularly active, pledging $38 billion to finance Ro-satom's global ambitions.
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