611.3731/225
The Cuban Ambassador ( Ferrara ) to the Secretary of State
Mr. Secretary: On November 17 of last year, 1926, Ambassador Crowder sent to my Government a note2 and a detailed statement about the commerce between the United States and Cuba made by the Tariff Commission of the United States3 as a consequence of the proposition for a revision of the Treaty of Commercial Reciprocity of 1902,4 submitted by the Government of Cuba on previous dates. The Ambassador said at the same time that the paper from the Tariff Commission would be followed by others of the same kind from other Departments so as to promote studies of all our mercantile questions in a spirit of greater cordiality on the part of both Nations.
The successive Governments of my country voicing the general opinion have been, since 1911, asking for a study of the commercial relations between; the United States and Cuba in order to arrive at a modification of the present treaty for the reciprocal benefit of the two Nations.
The late successive crises enhanced the public clamor. But the Cuban Government did not wish to have an instrument which is to endure as many years as possible, as is always the case with a commercial treaty, brought to discussion in a period of difficulties and discomfort. Therefore it has not brought of late the matter before your Government for consideration notwithstanding the note of November 17, 1926, and has endeavored through internal measures and at an enormous unilateral sacrifice to remedy the acute part of the crisis. Now upon an examination of the data submitted by the Ambassador of the United States to Cuba, my Government finds [Page 504] itself in a position to begin, on data which both parties may accept as accurate, a joint study of all the questions, in a spirit of the greatest cordiality and, what is more than cordial, sincere sympathy which, while it has always existed between our two countries because of indelible historical memories, has recently grown stronger.
The existing commercial treaty has been in operation since 1903, a rather long time. The circumstances that gave it birth have undergone a radical change; the commerce upon which it was based has increased in the ratio of six hundred percent. Many of the articles that are now imported in large quantities in Cuba were not even known at the time of the said treaty. And, as was very wisely put by the Tariff Commission of the United States, the benefits of the commercial treaty with respect to Cuba practically disappeared on the date when owing to the excessive output of Cuban sugar there no longer came into the United States any sugar that did not enjoy the preferential tariff treatment and as for the United States, the world events of the last few years have had more importance for the exporting trade of this Nation than the benefits of the treaty.
A careful and continuous labor animated by a broad desire of mutual interest might serve as a basis for alterations in the antiquated precepts of the commercial treaty now in force.
I avail myself [etc.]
- Post, p. 505.↩
- Not printed; the final report of the Tariff Commission was printed as The Effects of the Cuban Reciprocity Treaty of 1902 (Washington, Government Printing Office, 1929).↩
- Foreign Relations, 1903, p. 375.↩