Foreign Relations of the United States Diplomatic Papers, 1936, Europe, Volume II

611.623/144

The German Ambassador ( Luther ) to the Secretary of State

[Translation]

Washington , June 15, 1936.

Mr. Secretary of State: By order of my Government, I have the honor to make the following communication to Your Excellency.

The German Government has taken note of the issuance of an order of the United States Treasury Department of the 4th instant (T. D. 48360), according to which certain groups of goods exported from Germany to the United States directly or through a third country are to be subjected, from July 12th of this year on, to the requirement of a special bond when brought into American domestic trade and to the subsequent application of special duties under Section 303 of the Tariff Act of 1930, in addition to the collection of the ordinary duties.

In the Foreign Office’s note of March 20, 1936,⁴⁰ to the American Ambassador in Berlin, the German Government has already explained the reasons for which, in view of the abnormal currency conditions prevailing in the world, special measures for compensating for exchange are indispensable if German exportation to the United States is not to be practically completely stopped, which would lead to consequences necessarily unpleasant even to American exporters. It also expressed in the note its reasons for the conviction that the protective provisions of Section 303 of the Tariff Act of 1930, promulgated by the American legislative branch for an entirely different set of circumstances, cannot be applied to the methods of compensation of exchange exercised in connection with German exportation to the United States.

The German Government maintains the pertinent statements in the note mentioned. Nor can it see in the possibility, which is indeed granted by the Tariff Act of 1930, of taking legal measures before the American customs courts, after the actual imposition and collection of special duties under the Treasury Department’s order, a satisfactory means of clarifying the situation. The German Government therefore finds itself compelled to lodge a protest against the United States Treasury Department’s order of the 4th instant, mentioned at the beginning [of this note].⁴¹

Accept [etc.]

Luther

40. See telegram No. 91, March 23, 3 p.m., from the Ambassador in Germany, p. 215.
41. Brackets appear in the file translation.