611.5131/1065
Memorandum by the Secretary of State
The French Ambassador called to say goodbye before leaving for a six weeks’ visit to Paris. He made reference to our trade agreement conversations and again assured me that he would exert his best efforts with his government to secure a substantial trade agreement with this country; he added that it would be difficult in the present political situation to secure an extensive trade arrangement, but that he hoped it would be sufficiently substantial to be received and appraised [Page 215] to a satisfactory extent by other countries as well as his own.
I expressed much satisfaction at the fine cooperation the Ambassador had been giving in support of the development of liberal commercial policy, together with the hope that his efforts in Paris might be crowned with success. I also very earnestly remarked that his government and mine had an epochal opportunity for service, for the reason that if the present program for the restoration of international trade which my government was carrying forward should break down and fail, the consequences would be unthinkable, because nations then would drift further in the direction of isolation in every economic line with all of the hurtful consequences that would inevitably result. I emphasized the point that the real and single major objective of our present economic program was not the narrow and temporary trade advantages which the country might acquire by giving its whole attention to driving trade bargains or opportunities bilaterally with first one country and then another, but it was the broader proposal which, by a number of examples of trade agreements, might induce other countries to proceed simultaneously with the United States in lowering trade barriers to a reasonable extent so that the immense volume of normal international trade might be restored, with the result that mine and other important countries like France would have many times the volume of international trade that they had now under bilateral methods or could ever hope to have under such narrow and limited methods of trading.
The Ambassador, of course, was in hearty personal accord with my views and again assured me that he would exert every effort with his government to promote and bring about at least a substantial trade agreement between our two countries. He expressed himself as hopeful that this could be done, although he cautioned me repeatedly that we should not expect an arrangement that would be sweeping or broad in its extent as a first step.