Foreign Relations of the United States Diplomatic Papers, 1937, The American Republics, Volume V

611.3531/566

Memorandum of Conversation, by the Chief of the Division of Trade Agreements (Hawkins)

[Washington,] November 22, 1937.

Participants:	Señor Don Felipe A. Espil, Ambassador, from Argentina;
	Señor Don C. Alonso Irigoyen, Financial Attaché from Argentina;
	Mr. Francis B. Sayre,
	Mr. Harry C. Hawkins.

Mr. Sayre presented Mr. Espil with the memorandum¹⁵ indicating our position with respect to the removal of the exchange discrimination in Argentina by the date of the formal announcement of intention to negotiate the trade agreement. The ambassador argued at length and with considerable emphasis that the Argentine Government should not be asked to take “so serious” a step until it had seen how far we could go in granting concessions on Argentine products.

Mr. Sayre pointed out that the United States extends to Argentina the benefit of all tariff concessions granted to other countries in trade agreements and otherwise accords most-favored-nation treatment to Argentine commerce. It asks only that before negotiations are instituted both parties be placed on the same footing in this respect by the granting of reciprocal most-favored-nation treatment to American commerce in Argentina. He explained further that it is the settled policy of this Government not to allow discriminations against it to be used as a bargaining lever for obtaining from it specific concessions and tariff reductions, but to conduct negotiations for reciprocal tariff reductions on a basis of non-discrimination of each to the other. Hence it is not our practice to institute trade-agreement negotiations until discriminations against us have been removed.

Mr. Sayre stated further that the trade agreement with Argentina involves serious political difficulty for this Government and that this difficulty would be so greatly increased as possibly even to endanger the success of the agreement, if we entered into negotiations without first having obtained the removal of the exchange discriminations.

Mr. Espil professed to have serious misgivings as to the difficulties which our proposal would present from the standpoint of the Argentine Government, but indicated that he would submit our proposal to his Government. He then inquired concerning the lists of products which would be involved in the negotiations and was informed that we expect to have available for him by Wednesday, lists showing the products on which the United States would probably ask improvement in present treatment, and those on which the United States probably would ask only for a binding of present treatment.

Mr. Espil at once inquired whether we were not going to give him a list of the products on which the United States would grant concessions to Argentina. He said it had been his understanding that we would do this. He referred in this connection to an inquiry which we had made at a previous meeting when we had asked if the lists which Argentina had thus far submitted were complete and whether it was desired to add any products to them. He was informed that our purpose in making this inquiry was merely to make sure that we had a complete list of the Argentine requests as a counterpart of the lists covering our requests which we were about to give them; in other words, that our list of requests will complete the picture and that we had not anticipated any further discussion of the Argentine requests in advance of the preliminary announcement of contemplated negotiations.

15. Infra.