711.52/201: Telegram
The Ambassador in Spain (Weddell) to the Secretary of State
[Received October 1—7:50 p.m.]
874. My 873, October 1, 7 p.m. The following is the text of the proposed memorandum:
In connection with informal representations made to this Embassy indicating a desire on the part of the Spanish Government to improve trade relations with the United States, I wish to inform Your Excellency that my Government has been and is still prepared to use its efforts to increase American purchases of Spanish products and thus give Spain additional purchasing power in the United States. In turn it is prepared to sell to Spain freely those products of which it has an exportable surplus. If certain products cannot be supplied or can be supplied only in limited amounts it is because of its shortages of such products in the United States due to our enormous defense effort. I might add that shortages of materials are becoming more acute daily and that the longer we delay in placing Spanish-American economic relations on an equitable basis the more difficult it will become for the United States to make available many of the products which Spain desires.
In my recent conversation with the Foreign Minister, he referred to gasoline. I wish to point out that the United States has over a long period of time sold to Spain all the gasoline which Spain was able to transport with its existing tanker capacity and that whatever delays have occurred in issuing export permits have become administrative delays due to the fact that exportation of gasoline is restricted in the United States for reasons of military defense.
Moreover my Government has continued to supply Spain with petroleum products and other urgently needed products in the face of a public attitude of increasing hostility on the part of Spain and despite the fact that Spain has excluded from its markets also American products except those which it could obtain only in the United States or which were obtainable elsewhere only at inordinately high prices. These products have been supplied to Spain in the face also of obstacles which the Spanish Government has placed in the way of the export to the United States of products of which Spain has had an exportable surplus.
In brief, the Government of the United States is prepared to examine the possibility of maintaining and in certain cases of increasing its exports to Spain of products which Spain requires, but it must know what the Spanish Government is prepared to contribute in order to place this trade on a reciprocal, friendly basis.