653.116/44
The Chargé in Portugal (Andrews) to the Secretary of State
[Received May 19.]
Sir: With reference to my despatch No. 2281, of May 4, 1928, on the subject of shipping discrimination, I have the honor to draw further attention to the difference in point of view held by the Department (Department’s Confidential Telegram No. 12, April 27, 1928) and by the Chiefs of Mission here in respect of bounties or subsidies paid to shipowners on cargoes imported.
The Department finds the paying of such subsidies a natural and usual way of compensating vessels owners for losses incurred, i. e., an indicated way of solving the port charges and customs import duties reduction, discriminations, now existing against foreign, and in favor of Portuguese national, shipping.
The other Missions without exception—unless it be possibly the German, whose attitude I do not know, the Chargé d’Affaires having agreed with the others, but the Minister, subsequently returned, perhaps not so agreeing—expressed, at the conference on April 17th, objection in principle as well as specifically to the subsidy on coal, sulphur and fertilizers.
As stated in my despatch, the British Ambassador, in particular, protested to this Government, under direct orders from his Foreign Office, against the bounty on coal.
If the British Government, whose influence is, on a showdown, predominant with any Portuguese Government on any question, and the major part of, if not all, the other foreign governments’ representatives here are also opposed to subsidies, considering them as discriminations in merely a different form, there would not appear to be much prospect of the Portuguese Government being brought to abolish the present discriminations through compensatory subsidies to the Portuguese vessels owners.
I have [etc.]