835.5151/622: Telegram

The Secretary of State to the Ambassador in Argentina ( Weddell )

15. You are instructed to present to the Minister of Foreign Affairs23 a note drafted along the following lines:

My Government has instructed me to request the earnest consideration of your Excellency, and of the interested authorities in the Ministry of Finance and Central Bank of the Argentine Republic, of the possibility of allowing American trade full equality of treatment in exchange matters. It is believed that your Excellency will recognize that reconsideration of the position of your Government in this regard is particularly opportune in view of recent economic developments.

The Government of the United States has noted with gratification the greatly increased prosperity which the Republic of Argentina has been enjoying during recent months, and feels that this encouraging development is of international significance in accelerating the general progress of world recovery. It is noted that the higher prices and great volume of Argentine exports have contributed, with other factors, to an appreciable strengthening of the Argentine peso. The reported prospects seem excellent.

If our understanding is correct, foreign exchange has become available in amounts which made it possible for the Argentine Government to make special payments abroad which involved large outlays of foreign exchange by the Argentine Government, such as the repayment of foreign loans. Furthermore, the refunding at lower interest rates of much of the rest of the Argentine foreign debt, which is now being achieved in the United States as well as elsewhere, should lessen the demand on foreign exchange availabilities for foreign loan service. Despite these developments and the impression that my Government received that greater amounts have become available for the payments of imports of merchandise, severe and discriminatory exchange handicaps against American trade remain operative. The circumstances outlined make it difficult for my Government to understand the necessity for this inequality, which is contrary to the policies unanimously approved at the Conference of Montevideo24 and Buenos Aires.25

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It will be recalled that in June 1936 the Argentine exchange control authority broadened the list of American commodities entitled to exchange at the official rate. The announcement at this time of further action by the Argentine Government towards the complete abolition of exchange discrimination against the United States would have a favorable effect on public opinion in the United States and strengthen still further the traditional bonds of commerce and friendship between the two countries.

Accept, et cetera.

Hull
  1. Carlos Saavedra Lamas.
  2. Resolution V, Economic, Commercial, and Tariff Policy, Department of State Conference Series No. 19: Report of the Delegates of the United States of America to the Seventh International Conference of American States, Montevideo, Uruguay, December 3–26, 1933, p. 196.
  3. Resolution XLIV, Equality of Treatment in International Trade, Department of State Conference Series No. 33: Report of the Delegation of the United States of America to the Inter-American Conference for the Maintenance of Peace, Buenos Aires, Argentina, December 1–23, 1936, p. 240.