611.3556/107
The Argentine Ambassador (Espil) to the Acting Secretary of State
Mr. Secretary: On November 11, 1931, this Embassy addressed a communication to your Department,44 requesting the Government of [Page 781] the United States to authorize the entry of mutton from Argentine Patagonia.
In that communication this Embassy maintained that Section 306 of the Tariff Law,45 interpreted in the light of its antecedents and administrative application, did not authorize the exclusion of our Patagonian meats from the United States market, since the expression “foreign country” which it employs, is to be taken in a geographic and not a political sense.
The question raised by that communication was the subject of serious consideration during the last Administration and the undersigned received all kinds of promises that a satisfactory solution of this matter would be obtained.
With the advent of the present Administration the solution was thought to be found in a modification of the Tariff Law, in Section 306 thereof. To this effect we Argentine delegates were assured, in the course of the recent conversations preliminary to the Economic Conference,46 that the message which President Roosevelt purposed to send to the Congress to secure authorization enabling him to negotiate treaties of reciprocity and reduction of tariff duties, would include a special clause with regard to this.
Meanwhile President Roosevelt has refrained from sending said message, which renders it impossible for the present to seek the solution of the problem of the Patagonian meats through new provisions of law.
Under these circumstances the undersigned considers that he must persist in the views which he expressed in his note of November 11, 1931, which he now renews, and feels confident that when the matter is examined with high and serene impartiality by the new authorities of your Department and the Department of Agriculture they will find it easy to give satisfaction to my Government’s legitimate request.
I avail myself [etc.]
- Not printed.↩
- 46 Stat. 590, 689. For text of section 306 (a), see letter of August 11, 1933, from the Acting Attorney General to the Secretary of Agriculture, p. 784.↩
- See vol. i, pp. 452 ff.↩