611.6531/409
The Italian Ministry for Foreign Trade and Exchange to the American Embassy in Italy2
Pro Memoria
In application of the stipulations of the modus vivendi concluded with the United States of America on December 16, 1937,3 the attached list of import contingents to be assigned to the U. S. A. for the year 1938 has been compiled.4
The said contingents have been calculated on the basis of the terms of Art. 8 of the Treaty under discussion with the U. S. A. which prescribes that if one of the contracting Parties imposes or maintains any form of limitation or control of the importation of any article in which the other contracting Party has a considerable interest, it shall allot to the other contracting Party, during a specified period, a proportion of the total quantity of each article admitted for importation equivalent to the proportion of the total importations of the said article which the other contracting Party supplied during a previous “representative” period.
For the purposes of such calculation, the year 1934, in which Italian commerce presented substantially the characteristics required in accordance with the Memorandum of Interpretation of Art. 8, has been chosen as the “representative” period.
Articles Subject to License
As regards articles subject to the regime of “licenses” for importation into Italy, the contingents fixed in the accords in force with all other countries on January 1, 1938, with intervening modifications, have been kept in mind.
[Page 558]The contingents granted to other states are established by “weight” with certain countries and by “value” with the majority of the others. Inasmuch as Art. 8 establishes that the contingents for the U. S. A. must be expressed in quantity, it has been decided for the purpose of calculating the quota pertaining to the U. S. A. to change the contingents of the various countries from “value” to “weight” on the basis of the average customs valuations as shown by the statistics of importation for 1937.
For contingents not made by agreement, account has instead been taken of those established independently by Italy; on these, the quota pertaining to the U. S. A. has similarly been calculated on the basis of the participation which it had in the chosen representative period.
Since in the list of specific contingents established with various countries several items are occasionally grouped together for a single quantity of importation; or sometimes the participation of the U. S. A. is greater in a sub-classification not always segregated in the accords with other countries, whereas such participation in the whole item may have slight importance; due account has been taken of these circumstances in determining the contingents to be allotted to the U. S. A.
In the attached list have been included only the articles judged to be of “considerable interest” in the schedule of Italian importation from the U. S. A. Therefore, articles have been left out whose contingents are less than 25,000 dollars in value. However, reservation is made for the possibility of examining (si fa riserva di esaminare) case by case the requests for importation pertaining to articles left out of the list which may come to this Ministry on the part of interested single concerns.
Among the commodities indicated in the attached list are included also the products subject in Italy to monopoly regime: (copper, tin, nickel, coal, coke, tobacco, wheat), as well as those subject to special import regimes (combustible mineral oils and lubricants, solid bitumens (soft petroleum pitch), colors, radio valves, cotton). For certain articles (dried prunes, lard, bacon, typewriters, machines and apparatus for heating, distilling, etc., files and rasps, radio valves, solid bitumens, common lumber, solid paraffin, resins, perfumery, acetone, printing ink, raw skins for fur making and tanned skins without hair) (See Annex. A.), it has been necessary to reduce the contingents due on the basis of application of the terms of Art. 8; this resulting from the amount of the contingents previously agreed upon with other countries, as well as from national requirements for the said articles envisaged for 1938. Especially in the calculation of the contingents for lard and bacon, the pure and simple application of the terms of Art. 8 would have led to results entirely out of proportion with respect to the average of purchases of these products effected in [Page 559] normal times and to the capacity of consumption of the Italian market. The contingents pertaining to the U. S. A. for such articles would, in fact, have been more than 310 per cent in the case of lard as compared with the quantity imported in 1934 (from 26,225 qtls. in 1934 to 81,530 qtls. in 1938) and 457 per cent in the case of bacon (from 5,904 qtls. to 26,960 qtls.) whereas the total requirements of said products from abroad for 1938 are appraised at an amount far below those of 1934—taking also into consideration the development of national production in this field.
Altogether, the reduction in contingents of the products indicated above, calculated on the basis of customs import valuations in Italy for 1937, amounts to about 118 million lire. In compensation for this reduction the contingents for the following products have been increased by an equal total amount: scrap iron and steel (49.3 million lire increase), crude mineral oils (41 million lire), raw skins not good for fur-making (20 million lire), salted intestines (2 million lire), lamp black (5.6 million lire).
Articles Subject to “Bolletta”5
As regards articles subject to the regime of “bolletta” which are admitted for importation into Italy—especially in relation to the necessities of procedure of the customs operations—on the basis of a fixed, single percentage with respect to 1934, for all articles subject to the said regime, it has been arranged, with few exceptions resulting from accords with single countries, to allot to the U. S. A. for 1938 a single percentage equal to 65 per cent of the quantities imported in 1934.
The average percentage resulting from the application of the principle contained in the terms of Art. 8 of the Treaty under discussion to products subject to “bolletta” imported from the U. S. A. would actually have been 57 per cent as compared with 1934; but taking into consideration that for certain articles, specified in Annex “B”, the said percentage has been reduced to 30 per cent of 1934, it has been resolved to compensate such reduction, which represents approximately 5.4 million lire in value, with an increase in the importation of all other products subject to “bolletta”, from 57 per cent to 65 per cent, which increase corresponds approximately in value to the above mentioned amount.
Item 809—“Tanned Skins Without Hair”, at present subject to the regime of “bolletta”, has been transferred to the license regime and therefore is included in the list of contingents relating to articles of [Page 560] the latter group. A measure is in course for the transfer of the item in question to the license regime as regards all sources of supply.
- Transmitted to the Department by the Ambassador in Italy in his despatch No. 819, March 4, 1938; received March 17.↩
- Department of State Executive Agreement Series No. 116, or 51 Stat. 361.↩
- Not printed.↩
- “Bolletta” articles were those admitted for importation by permits issued to individual importers or organizations on basis of a percentage of prior importations of the same articles by the same importers.↩