611.2231/126b: Telegram
The Secretary of State to the Chargé in Ecuador (Sparks)
10. Referring to the Department’s telegram No. 5 of January 5 [25], 1937, we are now prepared to release a list of products in regard to which the United States will consider the granting of concessions to Ecuador. The products with their tariff paragraphs are as follows:
- for possible duty reductions:
- palm leaf hats 1504 (b) (2);
- naranjilla juice, probably 806 (a);
- bananas, dried, desiccated, or evaporated 752;
- pulverized bananas 1558;
- for possible bindings on the free list:
- annatto 1609;
- bananas and plantains 1618;
- cinchona bark 1619;
- cacao beans and shells 1653;
- coffee 1654;
- kapok 1684;
- reptile skins 1715;
- tagua nuts 1778;
- sawed balsa wood 1803 (1);
- balsa wood in the log 1803 (2);
Consideration will also be given to the granting to Ecuador in its own right of the reduction in the excise tax on imports of balsa wood not in log form to $1.50 per thousand feet provided for at present in the Canadian trade agreement.
Please bring this list to the attention of the Ecuadoran Government and endeavor to obtain its acquiescence to the publication of it as a list to which consideration of possible concessions by the United States to Ecuador will be confined, emphasizing again the penultimate sentence of the Department’s telegram No. 5. Cable results promptly in order that we may, in the absence of objections, proceed with the publication of this list as described in telegram No. 5.
Please request the Ecuadoran Government to withhold publicity on this subject until date on which it is agreed that formal public announcement and publication of the list will be made here.
The reasons for not including in the above list the other commodities in which Ecuador expressed an interest in obtaining concessions are as follows: In the case of rubber and its refuse, mangrove bark, lentils, mineral waters, and manufactured and unmanufactured tobacco Ecuador is an unimportant or negligible supplier. (With the possible exception of pulverized bananas concerning which our information is not complete, the only items included in the list in the first paragraph above of which Ecuador is not, at least potentially, a principal or an important supplier are items on which concessions have already been granted to other countries.) With respect to wool rugs it has not been found feasible to make a new tariff classification which would result in the chief benefits of a possible concession on this product going to Ecuador. As to carbonic gas no concession can be given for the reason given in the last sentence of your despatch No. 632 of December 14, 1936.38 With regard to “medicinal plants and herbs” it is believed that the principal product of interest covered by such a term, of which Ecuador is an important supplier, is cinchona bark, which has been included in the above list.
You are authorized to indicate discreetly to the Ecuadoran Government the reasons set forth herein for not including the products referred to in the preceding paragraph in the proposed list for publication.