Office of the Historian

611B.9417/222a

The Department of State to the Japanese Embassy84

undated
1.
The United States Trade Commissioner at Manila will be prepared in the future to furnish quite unofficially to representatives of the Association of Exporters of Cotton Piece Goods to the Philippines or to the Japanese Consul General in Manila, the names and addresses of those who transship Japanese cotton piece goods from Hong Kong to the Philippines. Preliminary arrangements have been made for [Page 935] this information to be furnished confidentially and unofficially to the Trade Commissioner by the Philippine Customs Service. It is essential that this information be furnished confidentially and it is important that the source of the information be held in confidence by the Japanese Exporters Association.
2.
It is hoped that the Japanese Exporters Association will be able so to control shipments to the Philippines that the total amount of Japanese goods arriving in the Philippines each month shall be held at moderate levels with no recurrence of the concentration of shipments in a few months which occurred in the fall of 1935.
3.
The Philippine customs statistics of arrivals have been based in reality upon statistics of clearances compiled at the time goods are cleared through customs but dated at the time of arrival of each shipment of goods. This method has led to the necessity of some revision of the monthly statistics of arrivals subsequent to their release, since some small proportion of the goods arriving each month is ordinarily not cleared through customs until several weeks later. For the future it may be desirable, therefore, from the standpoint of both the Japanese Government and the American Government, to shift the basis of Philippine statistics to statistics of clearances. It would be possible to compile final statistics based on clearances much more quickly and accurately than is possible so long as they are to be based upon date of arrival of goods. An expression of opinion on this point on the part of the Japanese Government will be appreciated.
  1. Handed to the Counselor of the Japanese Embassy by Mr. Veatch, September 28.↩