Secretary’s Memoranda, Lot 53D444, Box 417
Memorandum by the Secretary of State
Cabinet Notes
Item 2—Position of the Administration on the Reciprocal Trade Agreements Program and the ITO Charter in the 82nd Congress
In accordance with Mr. O’Gara’s memorandum to me of November 13, I forwarded yesterday to the President the memorandum entitled “Position of the Administration on the Reciprocal Trade Agreements Program and the ITO Charter in the 82nd Congress.” The President read the memorandum and sent me word that it would be agreeable to him to have me raise this at the Cabinet meeting. Accordingly I did so, explaining that I was taking this method of getting Cabinet discussion rather than inter-departmental clearance at lower levels in order to reduce the possibility of public discussion at this point.
After a brief discussion of the matter. I made the recommendations contained in Mr. O’Gara’s memorandum. The President asked for an [Page 787] expression of views by all members of the Cabinet. Secretary Sawyer was absent. Mr. Foley for the Treasury, Secretary Chapman for Interior, Mr. Harriman, Mr. Steelman, Mr. Tobin, Mr. Brannan, all expressed their concurrence. The other members had no comments to make.1
Mr. Brannan and Mr. Tobin hoped that our action in dropping the ITO could be done in such a way as not to appear to yield ground to the opposition.
Mr. Steelman suggested that it might be possible to use this willingness to abandon the ITO in order to gain some concessions from some of the members of the House and Senate who might otherwise dis-approve our Trade Agreements Program. He said that he was under the impression that we would find considerable opposition to the Trade Agreements Act.
At the conclusion of the discussion the President authorized me to go forward on the basis of the recommendations made. I told him that we would keep in touch with him and with Mr. Steelman on the development of our discussions.
I am not clear from the recommendations made to me by the Department whether the Department will now go forward with Congressional discussions or whether it wishes discussion through the White House.2
- The persons named in this paragraph are, in the order mentioned: Charles, Sawyer, Secretary of Commerce; Edward H. Foley, Jr., Under Secretary of the Treasury; Oscar L. Chapman, Secretary of the Interior; W. Averell Harriman, Special Assistant to the President; John R. Steelman, The Assistant to the President; Maurice J. Tobin, Secretary of Labor; and Charles F. Brannan, Secretary of Agriculture.↩
- Circulated to Mr. O’Gara, the Assistant Secretary of State for Congressional Relations (McFall), the Director of the Policy Planning Staff (Nitze), and the Under Secretary of State (Webb).↩