611.1631/109a

The Secretary of State to the Minister in El Salvador (Corrigan)

No. 91

Sir: I am transmitting herewith one copy of a confidential report on the “Foreign Trade of El Salvador with Special Reference to Schedule II”,3 prepared by the tariff representative on the Country Committee on Trade Agreements with Central America.

[Page 540]

The one recommendation made in the report to the effect that the duty in the United States on Peru balsam be reduced from 10 percent to 5 percent ad valorem has been approved by the Trade Agreements Committee. This concession, together with the binding on the free list of coffee and henequen, can be offered El Salvador in return for the list of concessions and assurances (Schedule I) which will very shortly be transmitted to you. There are apparently no other concessions or assurances of value to El Salvador which this Government can grant at this time, although it will be possible, as is being done in the trade agreement with Haiti4 to give assurance in the body of the agreement that as long as the quota provisions of the Act “to include sugar beets and sugar cane as basic agricultural commodities under the Agricultural Adjustment Act,5 and for other purposes,” approved by the President of the United States of America on May 9, 1934,6 are operative, any sugar imported into the United States of America from the Republic of El Salvador with respect to which a drawback of duty is allowed, under the provisions of Section 313 of the Tariff Act of 1930,7 shall not be charged against the quota established by the Secretary of Agriculture of the United States of America for the Republic of El Salvador.

There is no objection to your communicating at your discretion this information to the Salvadoran Government. It is suggested, however, that it may be advisable to defer doing so until such time as the Salvadoran Government itself raises the question with you as to what concessions and assurances the United States is prepared to grant in return for the concessions we propose to request.

Very truly yours,

For the Secretary of State:
Francis B. Sayre
  1. Not printed.
  2. See pp. 642 ff.
  3. Approved May 12, 1933; 48 Stat. 31.
  4. 48 Stat. 670.
  5. 46 Stat. 590, 693.