153. Memorandum From the Special Assistant to the President (Schlesinger) to President Kennedy1
SUBJECT
- Commerce-USIA Disagreement Regarding Overseas Expositions
You may recall that, after Secretary Hodges returned from the trade fair at Brno, Czechoslovakia, he told you that he felt the US exhibits at international trade fairs should be directed to the promotion of American exports rather than to the transmission of an image of the [Page 417] United States.2 You asked me to look into the question of our policy with regard to international expositions.
As the government’s exhibit program operates now, it has two segments: USIA’s Special International Exhibits Program (SIE), and a separate Department of Commerce program, with its own appropriations, specifically devoted to staging exhibitions at international fairs where the principal purpose is the promotion of American exports. In this second category—which includes, for example, most fairs in Western Europe—Commerce already determines the site, theme and content of the exhibits. The only question is whether Commerce should also control the part of the trade fair program now assigned to USIA—which would include particularly fairs behind the Iron Curtain.
The Bureau of the Budget has been fully into this matter and believes that, where fairs are primarily significant for political and psychological rather than for economic reasons, they should remain the responsibility of USIA.3 The State Department agrees. So do I. The legislative history, the language of both enabling and appropriating legislation, and expressions of Presidential intent (as in your letter to Ed Murrow of August 11, 1961)4 also support this position.
The reasons for keeping this category of fairs in USIA hands are briefly as follows:
1) National exhibits have become a significant weapon of political warfare. Often it serves US interests to have an exhibit at a trade fair where the prospects of actual sales would not warrant US participation.
2) Our interests in this area are better served when the exhibit is planned with political and psychological purposes in mind than when it is a haphazard and conglomerate commercial show without a coherent message. A strictly commercial show might even reinforce Communist stereotypes about American materialism and the poverty of American culture.
3) Obviously trade promotion must be an element, and this element should be strengthened when possible; but in this category of fairs it should not be allowed to dissipate or subvert the major propaganda purpose.
My conclusion, in short, is that the present policy regarding trade fairs is correct, and that there is no reason to change it.
- Source: Kennedy Library, President’s Office Files, Staff Memoranda Series, Box 66, Schlesinger, Arthur M., 11/63. No classification marking.↩
- See Document 143.↩
- See Document 145.↩
- See Document 45↩
- An unknown hand signed “A.S., jr.” above Schlesinger’s typed signature.↩