883.512 Motor Vehicles/33
The American Legation in Egypt to the Egyptian Ministry for Foreign Affairs54
Aide-Mémoire
The Legation of the United States of America has the honor to refer to the Royal Ministry’s Aide-Mémoire of May, 1932,55 embodying a revised schedule of motor car taxes which the Royal Egyptian Government proposes to substitute for the present municipal motor car taxes and for the license fees provided in Article 12 of the Automobile Regulations of July 16, 1913, as subsequently amended by Decree of September 3, 1930, and duly approved by the General Assembly of the Mixed Court of Appeals.
The Legation, having duly transmitted the proposals of the Royal Ministry for Foreign Affairs to the Department of State, Washington, D.C., has been requested by the Department to inform the Royal Egyptian Ministry for Foreign Affairs that the Department of State considers the question regarding the circulation of trucks and busses, which was the subject of the Legation’s Notes Nos. 236 and 263 [268] of March 21 [31] and June 13, 1932, to the Royal Ministry, and the proposed new taxes as component and inseparable parts of one question.
The Legation has been further directed to remark that the Government of the United States of America considers that the restrictions imposed upon the circulation of trucks and busses have no warrant in existing Egyptian legislation and are in violation of the rights of the United States and detrimental to American interests. While the Government of the United States of America is prepared to give sympathetic consideration to acquiescing in the application of the proposed new motor taxes to American nationals, when the Government of the United States of America has been given the opportunity of examining them in the form of a draft law modifying the text of Article 12 of the Automobile Regulations of July 16, 1913, it cannot do so until the situation in respect of the circulation of trucks and busses has been satisfactorily settled, both as regards the modifications introduced in the Automobile Regulations of July 16, 1913, without the assent of the General Assembly of the Mixed Court of Appeals, as well as regards the taxes or fees imposed by the Roads and Bridges Department of the Ministry [Page 655] of Communications, the application of which to American nationals has never been sanctioned by the Government of the United States of America.