811.24 Raw Materials/378
The Canadian Legation to the Department of State
Memorandum
With reference to a press statement released on October 11th 1939 by the Army and Navy Munitions Board on strategic and critical war materials, enumerating a number of products in respect of which there appeared to be particular apprehension that export sales might defeat the United States Government’s efforts to accumulate adequate stocks for national use during a war emergency, the statement mentioned about a dozen primary materials of which United States production is normally less than that country’s requirements, and suggested that the re-export to foreign countries of stocks of such goods which had been imported to the United States was unpatriotic and to be condemned.
It happens that Canada is also deficient in most of the primary materials described as “strategic” by the United States authorities, and in normal times procures a substantial proportion of its requirements of these goods through the United States, which had in the first instance bought them from the foreign producing countries. The enclosed tables15 show, in respect of each of the products listed in the Press Statement under reference, total Canadian imports and imports from the United States for each of the four years since 1935. The data for 1938 in each case show the value as well as the quantity of Canadian imports of these articles from the United States and from all countries, and the percentage of Canadian requirements that was secured from the former.
It will be very much appreciated if the information contained in this tabular statement could be brought to the attention of the appropriate United States authorities to indicate to them that normal imports into the United States, under peace-time conditions, of strategic commodities in which the United States is deficient include an allowance for re-exports to Canada which the Canadian authorities would not wish to have jeopardized in war time. It is considered that the United States does not wish to relinquish its important entrepôt trade in these and other commodities and in any measures which might be taken to conserve adequate domestic stocks for military purposes would bear in mind Canada’s reliance upon access to supplies in the United States.
- Not printed.↩