694.006/26: Telegram
The Counselor of Embassy in China (Lockhart) to the Secretary of State
[Received December 22—8:55 a.m.]
840. Embassy’s 813, December 11, 4 p.m.80 Text of the law as transmitted by Mukden’s despatch No. 181, December 17, copy of which was sent to the Department,80 makes it evident that the trade control law is a part of the general program for effecting control over foreign exchange. The law provides for the relinquishment of the former “emergency trade control law”. Mukden observes that the law and the Imperial ordinance of the same date to contain the export and import of certain commodities “manifest a phase of Manchukuo’s cooperation with Japan in emergency period economic control” for the Kwantung army considers trade control to be a necessary “semi-wartime” measure; and “as such, it is no more likely to be relaxed because it transgresses American rights, than were any of the preceding ‘national policy’ laws, beginning with the legislation establishing the petroleum monopoly and extending through the property insurance law, the exchange control law and the foreign juridical persons law” (see Embassy’s 808, December 8, 5 p.m.).