660i.116/4: Telegram
The Secretary of State to the Minister in Estonia (Skinner)3
16. Your despatch No. 8, April 7, from Tallinn. Department’s instruction of March 8, 1932, to Tallinn carefully avoided suggesting any specific period of time as the proper basis for determining a fair share of the permissible imports that may be allotted to the United States. On the contrary, it stressed the Department’s desire to be in a position to employ any evidence tending to show what the American share would have been had restrictions not been imposed. The freedom of action which the Department earnestly desires to maintain would of course be impaired if the Department permitted to remain uncorrected the three year criterion which, in the second paragraph of your aide-mémoire of April 6, 1932, you stated is acceptable to this Government.
Accordingly, you are instructed to request permission of the Foreign Minister to withdraw the aide-mémoire and to resubmit it after the following has been substituted for the first two sentences of the second paragraph:
“With regard to the allotment of import contingents, it has been the position of the Government of the United States that the United States should receive for each commodity affected a quota corresponding, as closely as is practicable, to the share of the total imports of that commodity that it would enjoy under normal conditions of unrestricted trade.”
- Sent to the Legation in Latvia.↩