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.
Attachment
April 17,
1963
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
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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
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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
