611.4131/581
The British Commercial Counselor (Chalkley) to the Chief of the Division of Trade Agreements (Hawkins)
Dear Mr. Hawkins: I send you herewith 10 copies of a provisional list of the items of the United States Tariff on which the United Kingdom Government will probably request duty reductions in the course of the negotiations for a United States-United Kingdom trade agreement, accompanied by copies of an explanatory letter from the Board of Trade to me and of a Note on Items in Schedule 9 (Cotton Manufactures).95
It will be observed that the Board of Trade have not yet received the considered views of the trade interests, and that it is fairly certain they will want to make certain additions to the list. At the same time they have tried to include every item in respect of which they think, on present information, that a reasonable case is likely to be made out.
It follows that they have been unable to make any serious attempt to narrow the various tariff classifications included in the list to particular varieties in which goods of special interest to the United Kingdom are likely to predominate. At a later stage we shall, in our own interests, probably want to limit our requests on some items so as to confine any concessions as far as possible to items falling within existing “basket” paragraphs of the Tariff, or to new sub-classifications which are likely to yield the maximum benefit to United Kingdom exporters. We should be reluctant to narrow our list in this way before publication, but we shall, of course, be ready to consider any particular cases in which the State Department may want, for special reasons, to press for omissions or limitations. I should like to tell the Board of Trade now by telegram of any such cases as they arise without necessarily waiting for your examination of the whole list to be completed.
I suggest that we meet immediately for the purpose of comparing the enclosed Provisional List with your list of dutiable items handed to me on November 24th, checking off the items of the Provisional List which you accept for inclusion in the list to be published and of arranging subsequent meetings to examine the remaining items.
On December 22nd I expect to receive some additions to our list, the items proposed for binding, and notes on some items of the present list the inclusion of which you may question.96
Yours sincerely,