Papers Relating to the Foreign Relations of the United States, With the Annual Message of the President Transmitted to Congress December 7, 1911

File No. 3710/13.

The Minister of the Dominican Republic to the Secretary of State.

[Translation.]

Dominican Legation,
Washington, January 4, 1910.

Excellency: I have the honor to forward herewith to your excellency a copy of the tariff just voted by the Dominican Congress modifying that now in existence and which the Government of the Republic wishes to submit to the President of the United States in compliance with the provisions of article 3 of the Dominico-American Convention of May 3, 1907,¹ which requires as an indispensable condition for the modification of the import duties of the Republic an agreement between the Dominican Government and the United States by which the former shall demonstrate and the President of the United States recognize that on the basis of the importations during the two years preceding that in which it is desired to make the modification of the said duties, and on the computation of the amount and class of the imported and exported articles in each of these two years at the rate of the import duties it is proposed to establish, the total net customs receipts would in each of the two years have been in excess of the sum of $2,000,000 American gold.

The customs receipts have greatly increased in the last two years and largely exceeded the $2,000,000 set by the convention as the minimum which the customs receipts must aggregate before any change can be made in the existing duties, and evidence of this is found in the data compiled by the general receiver of customs.

It has also been proved that the modification in the new law will not cause a decrease in the amount of duties even though the Government’s expectation that the importation of a considerable number of articles which were subject to prohibitory duties and now are moderately taxed should be disappointed. The new tariff, as aptly stated by Gen. Edward’s last year’s report of the Bureau of Insular Affairs, “has been carefully prepared with a view to remove many of the oppressive features of the present law, while at the same time it insures the income required to meet the requirements of the convention and the needs of the Dominican Government.”

Be pleased, etc.,

Emilio C. Joubert.

1. See Foreign Relations, 1907, p. 309; Malloy’s Treaties I, 420. The treaty was concluded Feb. 8, 1907; ratifications exchanged July 8, 1907; proclaimed July 25, 1907.