611.4231/2508a
The Secretary of State to the British Ambassador ( Lindsay )
My Dear Mr. Ambassador: Permit me to refer to the requests made by this Government, with a view to facilitating the negotiation of a new and mutually satisfactory trade agreement with Canada, that the Government of the United Kingdom assent to the relaxation [Page 175] of the preferential margins now enjoyed by certain specified products of British origin in the Canadian market.
Although the number of products on which the Canadian Government is contractually bound to maintain a preferential margin is relatively large, the American negotiators, recognizing the importance attached to these margins in the United Kingdom–Canada agreement of 1937,12 purposely refrained from asking that they be modified except in respect of a limited number of products. It had been our hope that your Government could on that account meet these limited requests. Without desiring in any way to disparage the contributions in this respect which your Government has indicated a willingness to make, the replies of your Government have on a number of products been a very real disappointment to me. In spite of this disappointment, however, and after giving the most careful and sympathetic thought to the difficulties which the United Kingdom Government foresees in meeting our requests, I have reluctantly decided to accept the latest proposals of your Government regarding Canadian preferences with one exception, namely, their unwillingness to assent to any modification of the preferential margin on anthracite coal.
I have given the fullest consideration to the factors which have influenced your Government in its position. On the other hand, the negotiation of a new trade agreement between this country and Canada would be open to the most severe criticism if it failed to include a concession on so important a product as anthracite coal. My Government has greatly modified its original request for free entry of anthracite into Canada during the whole year. It is now willing to confine its request to free entry during the five months, December to April, with no reduction in the duty during the remaining months. It seems most unlikely that free entry for American anthracite during this limited period could have an injurious effect upon shipments from the United Kingdom to Canada. Furthermore, owing to the difficulties of winter navigation and the long freight haul from the Atlantic coast to the large consumption centers, it is unlikely that any third country would develop substantial anthracite exports to Canada as a result of a limited concession to the United States.
In the light of these considerations, I would like to ask most earnestly that the United Kingdom authorities reconsider this question with a view to allowing the Canadian Government to grant this limited concession to an important American product.
I am [etc.]
- British Cmd. 5382: Trade Agreement between His Majesty’s Government in the United Kingdom and His Majesty’s Government in Canada, February 23, 1937. ↩