840.50/12–2044: Telegram
The Ambassador in the United Kingdom (Winant) to the Secretary of State
London, December 20,
1944—7 p.m.
[Received 7:45 p.m.]
[Received 7:45 p.m.]
11306. ReEmbs 10831, December 7, and 11114, December 15. Liesching, Eady, Robbins and Fergusson in another informal conversation with Hawkins, Steere and Penrose today outlined the tentative United Kingdom position on criteria of nondiscrimination with reference to quantitative restrictions and state trading.
- 1.
- With respect to quantitative restrictions they felt that while global quotas would give freest play to competitive forces and hence would be least discriminatory, they involved such serious technical difficulties that normally quotas would be allocated. The representative merits formula for allotting quotas is still acceptable to them as a starting point, but they point out the difficulties of finding a representative period after 5 years of war and the need for taking account of other considerations in making allotments. In other words, the representative period formula must be given much greater flexibility.
- 2.
- With reference to state trading, they accept the “commercial consideration” principle, under which importing countries would buy to their best advantage, prices varying in line with commercial influences. They think, however, that this is compatible with allotment among suppliers, using the representative period modified by evidence of changes in trends and by latitude to refrain from buying “job lots” due to temporary and capricious changes. Thus they appear to envisage where desirable the allotment of purchases in state trading on principles resembling those on which quotas would be allotted in administering quantitative restrictions.
- 3.
- With respect either to the allocation of quotas or government purchases, they have in view the probability that rather than attempting to allocate under any general formula the importing country would consult the supplying countries and try to arrive at an agreement as to what would be the fairest allocation in all the circumstances.
- 4.
- It is possible that in British thinking in regard to control measures to stabilize the position of primary agricultural food producers, government purchase arrangements initiated by the importing country with purchases allocated in consultation with supplying countries would be substituted in some cases for international commodity agreements. It may be that they feel that in this way the importing country would be in a stronger position to exercise an influence on prices. We will endeavor to ascertain more definitely their trend of thinking on this point.
- 5.
- The United Kingdom officials emphasized strongly their desire to avoid having any words hostile to state trading either in the convention or in the records of negotiations. They feel that opposition would be created in the USSR and other countries which may favor state trading in the post war period if the draft multilateral convention to be presented to an international conference appeared to have been drawn up for their own purposes by a country or countries which dislike state trading. This point is also of importance to them as a matter of domestic politics.
Winant