560.AL/10–2848
Memorandum by the Chief of the Division of Commercial Policy (Willoughby) to the Chief of the Division of International Conferences (Kelchner)
At the Second Session of the Contracting Parties to the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) held at Geneva in August 1948, it was decided that a third session should be held in Geneva beginning April 8, 1949. The agenda will include consideration of a number of general policy questions relating to GATT and certain adjustments in GATT. The most important of these adjustments will result from bilateral renegotiation of certain GATT concessions between the U.S. and other countries with Brazil, Ceylon, Pakistan and Cuba, which are at present under way with the approval of the Contracting Parties.1 The agreements reached in these bilateral negotiations will be subject to final action at the Third Session. It was also decided to invite certain governments not signatories to GATT to enter into negotiations to accede to GATT. Up to the present time the following countries have accepted this invitation: Denmark, Dominican Republic, El Salvador, Finland, Greece, Haiti, Italy, Nicaragua, Peru, Sweden, and Uruguay. (See the attached press release for further details2). The meeting to conduct these negotiations will begin at Geneva on April 11, 1949.
[Page 946]It is the purpose of this memorandum to apprise you of these developments in order that timely preparation may be made for the forthcoming meetings.
It will be recalled that the negotiation of GATT by the U.S. and 22 other countries constituted the most comprehensive action ever undertaken to reduce barriers to world trade, including as it did an exchange of tariff and other concessions covering more than half of total world trade. The forthcoming tariff negotiations will extend significantly the area and the volume of world trade covered by this comprehensive code of fair conduct for international trade, and will represent a significant advance of this Government’s objectives under the Trade Agreements Program.
The delegation required for the tariff negotiations will be considerably smaller than that required for the original negotiation of GATT. Nevertheless, a negotiation by as many as 23 countries (the Contracting Parties) with 11 or 12 additional countries (the participation of Colombia is not yet certain) involves negotiating problems of great complexity. It should also be pointed out that the difficulty of tariff negotiations does not vary proportionately with the size of a country. In fact, the negotiations with some of the smaller countries at the forthcoming meeting may involve more complex problems and more difficult negotiating problems than did the negotiations with the more important original Contracting Parties. As in the case of the original GATT negotiations, however, the multilateral negotiating procedure will result in a substantial net saving compared to the cost of carrying out the negotiations separately with each country.
It is contemplated that U.S. participation in the Third Session of the Contracting Parties (as distinct from the tariff negotiating meeting) can be handled by members of the delegation to the tariff negotiations and no separation of the delegations for the two meetings is therefore necessary.
It is estimated that the U.S. Delegation to the tariff negotiating meeting and the third session of the Contracting Parties will require a total membership of approximately 100, in two general categories:
- 1.
- Negotiating personnel, including Trade Agreements Committee and negotiating teams
- 2.
- Technical, secretariat and administrative personnel.
[Here follows a detailed listing of the personnel needed by the delegation.]
It is estimated that the Third Session will last from April 11 to June 30 although the negotiations may possibly go into July (fiscal 1950).