611.5231/1158
Memorandum by the Chief of the Division of Trade Agreements (Grady)
The Spanish Ambassador called on his own initiative, but had apparently no particular objective other than to ascertain the attitude of the Department toward the proposed Spanish agreement. I suspect that word in the papers to the effect that we would shortly sign an agreement with France20 had something to do with his visit.
He indicated that he had had no word from his Government for some time and inquired if we had heard from our Embassy at Madrid. I said nothing of importance had come in for some time on the matter of the pending trade agreement. He went over the ground which he has covered before to indicate the difficulties with which his Government is faced, but I told him that the Trade Agreements Committee and certain members of the Department here were disturbed at the long delay since the Ambassador took the proposed agreement to Madrid with him in November and that the signing of the French Agreement would bring to a head the whole matter of continuing to extend to Spain most-favored-nation treatment. He said that he would advise his Government of the early signing of the French Agreement and inquire as to their views on the matter of allocation of exchange for American exports to Spain and with respect to the present blocked balances. I told him that there were a number of items in the French Agreement which would be of very great interest [Page 794] to Spain and hoped that we would have some word shortly as to the present problems our exporters are experiencing in regard to getting payment and as to assurances of most-favored-nation treatment on exchange as a condition of consummating a trade agreement with Spain.