Moscow, while shopping for more ships, peddling more gold, and making other moves in the industrial countries of Western Europe, also reached outside Europe and tried to fasten closer economic ties with Asia and Latin America. The trade of the Soviet Union with the non-Communist areas of Asia, and with Latin America, has never amounted to more than driblets. That of Czechoslovakia and Poland has been a little bigger. The U.S.S.R. entered this field in 1953 with a good deal of propaganda effect. The effect in delivery of goods was still to be seen. The Soviet trade bosses used a number of devices. One device was to offer loans and technical assistance. Some of the loans were connected with trade. Others, related to construction activities within free-world countries, were more suggestive of investments and provided opportunity for increased Soviet or Communist Party economic penetration. There was a marked interest in assisting in the establishment of storage and supply facilities. So far, few Soviet offers have been accepted. Possibly this is because they are disturbingly reminiscent of the penetration techniques that were used to gain economic leverage inside the Eastern European countries and China prior to Soviet political domination of these regions. Or it may be that skepticism has been aroused by the experience with Communist Party use of commercial enterprises in some Western European countries to finance the local party and the Kremlin's activities. Another device has been to build lavish exhibits at "trade fairs." This activity, though carried on in Western Europe too, was especially marked in South Asia. On an increasing scale, since 1951, the Soviet Union and its satellites have been using trade fairs for a double purpose--to promote the kind of trade the bloc desires and to propagate Communist ideas. By elaborate and costly displays the Soviet-bloc governments seek to dominate the fairs; to overshadow the exhibits of the United States and other free-world countries; and to create the illusion of an industrial and commercial superiority over the Western nations, especially the United States. The U.S.S.R. makes a concerted and determined effort to discredit and minimize the industrial and technological achievements of the United States by contrasting the great size of the Communist nations' participation with the usually modest representation by United States firms. An important distinction between Soviet and U.S. exhibits is that the former are developed as a state trade promotion and propaganda undertaking, and involve the building of special pavilions, whereas U.S. participation amounts to the sum total of exhibits of individual U.S. industrial and commercial companies assembled for the single purpose of promoting the sale of individual products.