466. Letter from Herter to President Kennedy, April 171

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Dear Mr. President:

I am enclosing a Memorandum which raises two points on which I hope I may have your decision or judgment within the reasonably near future.

In view of the fact that the second question in particular has political implications, I have taken the liberty of sending a copy of this Memorandum to each member of your Cabinet, and to Ted Sorensen and Larry O’Brien. I have also asked them to express any views in order that you might have the benefit of any comments they care to make. These should all be in hand within a week and if at that time you would wish me to discuss this matter with you, I shall be glad to do so.

Most sincerely yours,

Christian A. Herter
Special Representative
for Trade Negotiations
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Attachment

There are two matters on which a determination by you in the near future will be essential in order that we can proceed with participations for the coming round of tariff and trade negotiations.

1. The Trade Expansion Act requires that you present to the Tariff Commission a public list of articles, consisting of five categories, on which both the Tariff Commission and this office would hold hearings and report to you within a period of not more than six months. The less important categories are those dealing with (1) tropical products, (2) certain agricultural products, (3) items subject to tariff duties of 5 per cent or less, (4) items on which 80 per cent of world trade is confined to the Common Market and the United States (probably only airplanes and some edible vegetable oils). The fifth category, and the most important one, covers products on which the United States can negotiate [Typeset Page 1850] tariff reductions up to 50 per cent spread over a period of not less than five years.

On this latter category, the law requires that the United States reserve from any negotiation all articles where escape clause action has been taken or where a finding has been made that articles (i.e. petroleum products) are subject to quota limitations for reasons of national security. Other reservations which the United States might make would come in that group of articles where affirmative escape clause action had been taken by the Tariff Commission but had not been approved by the Executive. These, at the request of the affected industry, would require re-study by the Tariff Commission in the light of present conditions. You would, of course, be free to exempt further articles after you had studied the summary of the hearings and received advice from the Tariff Commission, this office, and other government agencies.

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The question to be decided deals with the all inclusiveness of the articles which are to be published and furnished to the Tariff Commission. It is my recommendation that all items subject to tariffs, with the exception of those noted above, should be presented by you to the Tariff Commission for the appropriate hearings and report to you by the Tariff Commission and this office.

This office has already received a number of requests from manufacturers that certain products be excepted from the list to be published and sent by you to the Tariff Commission. I feel that it would be a serious mistake if the Executive, whether through this office or on recommendation of any other interested agency of our Government, made an arbitrary determination that such items should be excluded from the list. To do so would involve a judgment on certain products without the benefit of the investigating and reporting procedure provided for in the Trade Expansion Act, and if granted in certain cases would subject you to the criticism of having played favorites based purely on Executive judgment and seriously impair our negotiating position. I therefore hope that you will approve publishing and sending to the Tariff Commission the full list with the exceptions required by law as recommended above.

2. While we cannot at this moment fix with precision the date at which we will have completed the procedures required by law in order to allow us to enter into the next round of negotiations, it nevertheless would appear that the 15th of April, 1964, would be the earliest practicable date. It is impossible to estimate how long these negotiations might last, but those familiar with this type of negotiation and the very large issues which are involved in it make an estimate of six months. Should such a timetable be accurate, this would mean a conclusion of the negotiations in the middle of October, 1964, a date which would precede [Typeset Page 1851] the Presidential elections by a brief span of time. We have had from some Europeans who will be directly involved in the negotiations, expressions of opinion that we would not want to complete negotiations until the Presidential election was over.

The question on which I should like your judgment is the question of timing. We could perhaps conclude the negotiations in (1) a three months period (which I doubt), (2) drag [Facsimile Page 4] out the negotiations so that announcement of any agreement would not come until after the elections, or (3) indicate that we should prefer not to begin negotiations until perhaps June or July of 1964, thereby making certain that they would not have been concluded until late in the year of 1964.

My reason for raising this question at this time is that it is expected that at the May 16th Ministerial Meeting of GATT, a date for the beginning of negotiations will be definitely set. The Working Party now sitting in Geneva, which is preparing the agenda for that Ministerial meeting, will undoubtedly make a recommendation for a specific date, and therefore it would be desirable if we could express our views as soon as possible.

Christian A. Herter
Special Representative
for Trade Negotiations
  1. Transmits April 17 memorandum requesting decisions on upcoming tariff and trade negotiation matters. Secret. 4 pp. Kennedy Library, Herter Papers, Memoranda to the President, USTR, Box 4.