282. Letter From the Special Representative for Trade Negotiations’ Executive Assistant (Auchincloss) to the Special Representative for Trade Negotiations (Herter)1
Washington, April 14, 1965.
Dear Governor:
I hope this will be my last report by letter and that you will be back next week. We all miss you, and I hope I’m not betraying any secrets by reporting that Cady had her hair done especially in preparation for her trip to see you today.
- 1.
- Cereals. Irwin has sent you a report on the exporters’ meetings last week, so I won’t try to elaborate.2 As for the timing of the negotiations, the EEC Council takes up the Commission’s cereals proposal again on May 13, and Hijzen says they will make this into a marathon session if necessary in order to reach agreement. We are urging them strongly to hold to the date of May 17 for the start of cereals negotiations, even though this means that countries will have little chance to study the various proposals by that time since they will not be laid on the table until sometime between May 13–17.
- 2.
- Adjustment Assistance. Senator Hartke has introduced a bill that would loosen somewhat the criteria that must be met for firms or workers to qualify for adjustment assistance under the Trade Expansion Act.3 Instead of the tariff concession having to be the “major” cause of increased imports and “increased” imports the cause of serious injury, the bill would require only that the concession be “in whole or in part responsible” for the increased imports and that the increased imports be “the predominant factor” in causing injury. The criteria for escape clause relief would remain unchanged, so the bill would have the effect of making adjustment assistance easier to get than escape clause action. We are now discussing within the Office whether the Executive should support the bill. It really comes down to a question of whether the danger that the escape clause criteria might be loosened in the legislative process outweighs the danger that the trade legislation in general and the escape clause in particular would face heavy political sledding in 1967 if the adjustment assistance provisions remain completely inoperative.
- 3.
- Wyndham White Visit. Wyndham White has tentative plans to come to Washington in the last week of this month. If the trip is confirmed, we will make arrangements for him to see a number of people in various agencies and in Congress.
- 4.
- Canadian Auto Parts Bill. Chairman Mills has just announced that he plans to take up the auto parts bill at the end of April.4 After that will come the $50 duty-free exemption for tourists, and only then the Revised Tariff Schedules bill.5 The much-battered RTS bill takes it on the chin again.
Very best regards,
Kenneth Auchincloss
6
- Source: Kennedy Library, Herter Papers, Kenneth Auchincloss, Box 5. No classification marking.↩
- The report of Irwin Hedges has not been further identified.2↩
- Vance Hartke, Democratic Senator from Indiana, introduced S.1333, 89th Cong., on March 1 to amend the adjustment assistance provisions of the Trade Expansion Act of 1962 regarding determinations by the U.S. Tariff Commission of injury or threatened injury to firms or groups of workers. Congress did not act on this bill.↩
- Wilbur D. Mills, Democratic Representative from Arkansas and Chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee, presided at hearings held April 27–29 on the administration’s bill (H.R. 9042, 89th Cong.) to implement the U.S.-Canadian executive agreement. This agreement, signed by President Johnson and Canadian Prime Minister Lester B. Pearson, at Johnson City, Texas, on January 16, 1965, called for removal of U.S. and Canadian tariffs on cars and car parts at the manufacturer’s level (17 UST 1372). The bill authorizing the President to remove duties at the manufacturer’s level on Canadian automobiles and parts for original equipment, the Automotive Products Trade Act of 1965, was enacted as P.L. 89–283, October 21, 1965; 79 Stat. 1016.↩
- Not further identified.↩
- Printed from a copy that bears this typed signature.↩