Office of the Historian

611.6731/529: Telegram

The Acting Secretary of State to the Ambassador in Turkey (MacMurray)

Washington, March 18, 1939—3 p.m.

14. Your 14, March 11, 2 p.m. You should inform the Chief of the Turkish Delegation that our approval of the inclusion of the 2 months’ notice clause in Article I of the initialed agreement resulted from his assurance that he could guarantee that there would be no increase in the duties on Schedule I articles during the term of the agreement (your telegram no. 74, October 21, 3 p.m.,20 Paragraph II B) and that the imposition of any increased duties on Schedule I articles after the agreement is signed would therefore be in contravention of the understanding reached between the two delegations during the course of the negotiations. Any such duty increases would give rise to serious criticism of the agreement in the United States because of the feeling of uncertainty it would create on the part of American exporters with respect to the future status of other Schedule I items, and the fact that the United States is obligated to maintain the duty concessions in Schedule II during the life of the agreement.

Rather than leave in Schedule I all of the articles mentioned in your telegram under reference with the understanding that the duties thereon might be increased in the relatively near future, we would [Page 864] prefer to omit from Schedule I all of them except dried prunes, canned prunes and canned prune juice, and canned asparagus. As you know, we attach considerable importance to the agricultural items in Schedule I, and for that reason do not wish to omit the prune items and canned asparagus. Therefore, if the Turkish Government should agree to leave these items in Schedule I, which would of course be subject to Numan’s21 aforementioned assurance, we would be willing to drop the remaining articles listed in your telegram under reference, but as a compensatory modification we would remove from Schedule II the concession on unshelled filberts. The withdrawal of the concession on unshelled filberts involves no material change in the value of our concessions to Turkey; as you are aware, there have been no imports of unshelled filberts into the United States from Turkey since 1935.

Welles
  1. Foreign Relations, 1938, vol ii, p. 1089.↩
  2. Numan Menemencioglu, Chief of the Turkish Delegation and Secretary General of the Turkish Ministry for Foreign Affairs.↩