711.61/807
Memorandum of Conversation, by the Under Secretary of State (Welles)
The Soviet Ambassador called to see me today at his request.
I said to the Ambassador that in an informal manner I wished to inquire what truth there was in newspaper reports of the past few days alleging that the Soviet Union had greatly increased above normal amounts its purchases of raw materials and strategic materials in the United States and was negotiating for similar purchases in other countries of the Western Hemisphere.81 After making his usual reservations to the effect that the commercial policy of the Soviet Union was solely a matter for the Soviet Union to determine outside of his [its] bilateral relations with the United States, the Ambassador said he would be very glad to answer my question. He said that the newspaper reports were completely untrue. He reminded me of a conversation he had had with Secretary Hull last spring when the Secretary had said to him that we preferred that the Soviet Union should not purchase within the United States materials which we ourselves were importing and which we did not produce, such as rubber, et cetera, but that in so far as such products which we did produce, such as cotton, et cetera, we would welcome all the purchases which the Soviet Government might care to make. The Ambassador said that with the exception of a small amount of cotton purchased last May, the Soviet Union had not purchased cotton in the United States although certain columnists asserted that thousands of pounds [Page 694] of cotton were being shipped to Vladivostok from the United States. He said that the Soviet Union had purchased either 130,000 or 30,000 bales of cotton, which was approximately the amount it was in the habit of buying here, and that if I had told him that we did not wish the Soviet Union to buy any more cotton in the United States, purchases would have at once ceased. With regard to alleged purchases in the other American Republics, the Ambassador stated that reports of negotiations between Argentina and the Soviet Union for the purchase of vast quantities of wheat, et cetera, were fantastic and wholly untrue. He said that no negotiations were in progress. He said that the Soviet Union was purchasing in Argentina small quantities of wool and hides and had no intention of purchasing more than the normal amount.
I inquired if it was not true that Amtorg intended sending representatives to Chile to negotiate the purchase of copper and other metals there. The Ambassador replied that some consideration had been given to this step but that it had been found that Chile did not offer the kind of concentrates which the Soviet Union was in the habit of purchasing and that he foresaw no possibility of any purchase by Russia of Chilean copper.
The Ambassador said that when he had come to Washington with Mr. Litvinov in 1933,82 the latter had had in mind proposing that some time in the future some form of triangular trade arrangement between some of the Latin American Republics, the United States, and the Soviet Union be made but that events since that time had not made possible the formulation of these proposals. The Ambassador said that he trusted that some time in the future this could again be taken up.
- An analysis of purchases by the Soviet Union in the United States and other American Republics was made in a memorandum by the Acting Chief of the Division of European Affairs on January 31, p. 600.↩
- Maxim Maximovich Litvinov, while People’s Commissar for Foreign Affairs of the Soviet Union, had come to Washington during November 1933 for the conversations culminating in recognition of the Soviet Union by the United States; see Foreign Relations, The Soviet Union, 1933–1939, pp. 25–43.↩