NEWS ANALYSIS : U.S. Economy Is Likely to Reap Vote’s Benefits : Finance: Revival of growth in Europe after currency catharsis could be a boon to American exporters.

The U.S. economy stands to benefit in the aftermath of Sunday’s narrow “yes” vote in France, but not because currency markets will be calm and European unity assured.

Indeed, the Maastricht Treaty, which calls for a single European currency by 1999, will almost certainly be rethought and renegotiated because its terms and restrictions have not addressed the real problem of Europe’s economies--which is that they are stalling out.

On Sunday, even as France voted, Ireland chose to devalue its currency in an attempt to cope with an economy suffering 18% unemployment.

The next step, say global investment managers, is likely to be a broad-scale lowering of interest rates in Europe, starting with France and probably extending to Germany in an attempt to rescue those economies from recession, even the specter of depression.

A break in European interest rates, in turn, would make it easier for the Federal Reserve to lower U.S. rates to stimulate the domestic economy.

And any revival of economic activity in Europe would boost possibilities for U.S. exports and for the vast but usually understated amount of business the United States does with European countries.

Money managers and economists looking ahead say that stronger economic growth in Western Europe could coincide with a newly vigorous U.S. economy early next year. That would help stave off disaster in the rapidly crumbling economies of the former Soviet Union--which pose a true danger to the world.

Those are the views of sophisticated financial experts, many of whom have never been as impressed as have politicians with the much-vaunted Maastricht Treaty, which in addition to a single European currency would create a European central bank.

Ostensibly, Sunday’s affirmative vote--albeit by the narrowest of margins--preserved the cause of Maastricht, with France aligning with Germany, the Netherlands, Belgium and Luxembourg to support a single currency bloc. In that scenario, Britain, Italy, Spain and Portugal would rejoin after devaluing and adjusting their own currencies.

But experts attending talks among leading industrial nations in Washington, said there is no way that Britain will again accept the restrictions on its economic policy that the Maastricht Treaty demands.

Even before the vote, international economists were saying that the European currency union was an idea that had to be rethought.

France, where opinion is clearly divided, has an ailing economy. Despite an unemployment rate of more than 10% and falling industrial production, France has bank lending rates at almost 10% to support its currency.

Even with Sunday’s vote, the French franc is likely to come under pressure in currency trading today.

“Germany, too, may see the wisdom of lower rates as they realize that the problem is not inflation stemming from unification (with the former East German states) but deflation in their once-strong West German economy,” says Francis Kelly, an investment manager and economist for the Putnam Group of mutual funds.

Statistics may not yet reveal it, but economic growth has just about ceased in the German economy.

Now, beginning with Britain, interest rates are loosening. And that has to be good news for the U.S. economy because of all the business U.S. companies do with Europe.

Last year U.S. merchandise exports to Western Europe totaled $119 billion--with imports from Europe at $103 billion--but that was a tip of the iceberg. In addition to merchandise, there is vast banking and finance business--and air travel--helping to swell a U.S. surplus in service exports that now approaches $100 billion.

And there is the enormous business done by U.S. companies in Europe, and European companies here, that doesn’t even get reflected in the official figures.

The French “yes” vote was important to all that business because it affirmed an outward-looking, less obstructionist French attitude on trade at a time when negotiations have been growing tense.

Amid all the currency furor, the promise of 1992 that customs borders would be abolished in the European Common Market has been all but forgotten.

But such a change remains a good idea, a vision of practical business people who saw, as a Volvo official put it, “that for a truck to go from Gothenburg, Sweden, to Milan, Italy, took three to four days” because of all the customs stops the driver had to make. The trip of less than a thousand miles obviously should take one to two days and may do so next year with a consequent increase in productivity.

A return to economic growth in Western Europe, and even more so in the United States, is important, said economic experts conferring in Washington. What they meant, aside from the fact that the Western economies need growth for their own sakes, is that the promise in Eastern lands newly sprung from communism is turning to chaos.

Countering such a threat, many see the U.S. economy expanding strongly once again no matter who is elected president in November. As one economist acknowledged, that would probably mean higher U.S. interest rates. The dollar also would strengthen.

But the week leading up to the vote and the emotion surrounding it have sown confusion and some disorder. When that clears, economists say, we are likely to see France and Germany giving priority to a revival of their economies. And they say we are likely to see benefits for the U.S. economy in the aftermath of Europe’s currency catharsis.