660M.116/20
The Secretary of State to the Minister in Lithuania (Lane)
Sir: The Department has received and read with much interest your despatch No. 427, March 2, 1937, in which you report your conversation on February 18, 1937, with the Lithuanian Minister for Foreign Affairs with regard to the quota in Lithuania for American motor cars.
The Department has noted with gratification and approval your alertness in following developments likely to affect American trade and the effort made by you to obtain for that trade an equitable share in the Lithuanian market. It is hoped that your conversation with the Minister will have the effect it was designed to produce.
In connection with the treatment accorded to American trade in Lithuania, it should be borne in mind that the concessions granted by the United States to other countries in agreements concluded under the Trade Agreements program are at present generalized to Lithuania. Generalization of these concessions will continue provided that Lithuania does not discriminate against American trade. Should, [Page 509] however, discrimination by Lithuania be established, the President may suspend the application of such concessions to the products of that country. These facts might well be brought to the attention of the Lithuanian authorities should it again become necessary to discuss with them threatened or actual discrimination against American trade.
It may be added for your information that nondiscriminatory treatment of the commerce of the United States with respect to quantitative restrictions on imports is considered by this Government to require, without reference to the allotments to other countries, the allotment to the United States of a share of the total quantity of any article permitted to be imported equivalent to the proportion of the total importation of the article which this country supplied during a previous representative period. By the term “representative period” is meant a series of years during which trade in the particular article under consideration was free from quantitative restrictions and discriminations and was not affected by unusual circumstances.
A copy of this instruction is being sent to the Chargé d’Affaires ad interim at Kaunas for the files of the Legation at that capital.5
Very truly yours,
- This instruction was sent to the Minister at his residence in Riga, Latvia.↩