611.4131/9–1045: Circular airgram
The Acting Secretary of State to Certain American Missions 30
US and Britain to Continue Financial and Trade Discussions
Financial and trade discussions with the British will open about September eleventh in Washington. Final composition of British delegation is not yet known but Halifax, Keynes, Harmer, Brand and Hall-Patch will be here. Since the State Department has prime responsibility for negotiations and since the Secretary is in London Clayton will act as Chairman until Mr. Byrnes returns from London. Department has undertaken responsibility for scheduling and organizing meeting of main group and appropriate subgroups and will provide secretariat. American delegation in addition to Clayton will consist of Crowley, Vinson, Eccles,31 Wallace32 and Symington33 of Surplus Property Board. Collado will act as Secretary General.
The discussions will be divided into four main parts: Financial problems—Vinson will Chairman this group which will discuss (a) financial arrangements during transition period; (b) sterling area arrangements and (c) exchange convertibility, anticipating Bretton Woods formula; Lend-Lease—Crowley will head these discussions which will cover (a) terms for continued delivery on non-munitions pipeline (b) arrangements for wind up of munitions program (c) reverse lend-lease (d) lendlease settlement including clean-up of inventories, capital installations etc. (e) ships (f) white paper questions; “similar” goods etc. Commercial Policy, headed by Clayton and discussions will cover proposals presented to UK in August covering within an International Trade Organization—(a) reduction of trade barriers (b) cartel policy (c) commodity policy. Other principle group will discuss Surplus Property Disposal and will be under Symington. Another possible topic will be use of US agencies for cash procurement. Appropriate agencies of Government will be represented [Page 122] in each instance. Recommendations of subgroups will be submitted to top group which includes chairmen of subgroups, Governor of Federal Reserve Board and Secretary of Commerce. Top recommendations will then be submitted to President.
- Sent to Paris, Brussels, Madrid, Lisbon, Bern, Cairo, Rome, Ankara, Stockholm, Oslo, Copenhagen, Belgrade, United States Political Adviser for German Affairs, Berlin, United States Political Adviser for Austrian Affairs, Vienna, Dublin, Athens, Praha, Budapest, Bucharest, Sofia, Helsinki, Ottawa, and Moscow.↩
- Marriner S. Eccles, Chairman of the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System.↩
- Henry A. Wallace, Secretary of Commerce.↩
- W. Stuart Symington, Chairman of the Surplus Property Board.↩