611.3731/875: Telegram
The Ambassador in Cuba (Caffery) to the Department of State
[Received 5:45 p.m.]
379. Department’s instruction No. 332, August 7 [8], 1934.65 The Cuban delegation under instructions have informed American technical [Page 162] advisers that the agreement in its present form will be unacceptable if we insist on retention of the note to the sugar concession and note to the tobacco concession relating to restoration of prevailing rates if adjustment program abandoned. They believe that since we are binding the maximum rates with much higher preferences in the greater part of their tariff they are entitled to guarantee of maintenance of the sugar and tobacco rates throughout the life of the agreement. As they have been told this is not possible they offer alternatively the following proviso at the end of the first sentence of article 18 of the general provisions “or unless the rates of duty on sugar and tobacco pledged in schedule II shall be increased as a result of the termination or modification of the respective acts for the restriction of the production of these commodities in the United States in which case this agreement shall automatically expire.”
- Not printed.↩