175. Memorandum From the President’s Special Assistant for National Security Affairs (Bundy) to President Johnson 1
SUBJECT
- Follow-up on the Miller Report on East-West Trade
At Tab A is Tom Mann’s recommendations for the State Department that we should now follow-up strongly on the East-West trade approach recommended by Irwin Miller and his Committee.2 At Tab B is a memorandum in which Jack Connor takes a somewhat different position.3 Both memoranda are important, although the passages on the Export Control Act are out of date now that it has been passed.4
[Page 504]State, Commerce, and Defense agree that the Miller approach to bridge building is sound. That it is in our interest to strike trade bargains with individual Bloc countries using trade as a carrot, and trading like good Yankees (or Texans).
It is also agreed that the important new tool that we need is authority to offer most favored nation treatment. Except for Poland and Yugoslavia, Eastern European countries now pay Smoot-Hawley Tariff rates.
It was agreed that the best way to get this bargaining authority is to have a new, separate East-West Trade Act which would spell out the means of using such authority in bilateral bargaining.
The difference between Commerce and the rest of us is on timing and on the relation of this issue to Vietnam. The matter of timing is minor—Jack Connor would like to have further “public education” before we begin Congressional consultation and develop a plan for a bill for the Hill. Others think the best way to get this education is to make a proposal and follow it up on the Hill.
The Vietnamese issue is more important and presents a basic policy issue. Rusk, Mann, and especially Tommy Thomson all think that it is precisely because of Vietnam that we should be keeping a clear signal of our interest in improved peaceful relations with the Soviet Union and the European Bloc countries. Connor’s question is whether we can get this point across with the Congress and the public at a time when we are having a tough contest in Vietnam.
It is a fair question.
On foreign policy grounds, I believe very strongly indeed that we should make this signal on peaceful trade both to the Russians and to the world. I think it is useful to make it even if the legislative road proves to be slow and tough. But I also think the final judgment on this peculiarly and necessarily Presidential.
On the Congressional front, I am sure that Fulbright would love to receive a bill and begin hearings and manage the timing of the whole exercise, in close consultation with us. Mansfield would be equally favorable. On the basis of preliminary consultation with Irwin Miller, I think Dirksen and Hickenlooper will be reasonable. The matter should not go beyond Senate hearings in this session in any case.
Tom Mann’s immediate proposal is that you should discuss this matter briefly with the Leadership on Tuesday5 and then authorize him to begin intensive Congressional consultations aimed at the early introduction of an East-West trade bill. In spite of Jack Connor’s reservations, [Page 505] I think this is the preferred course, but you may wish to hear further argument.
Have O’Brien put this on the agenda for the next Leadership Meeting6
Get Connor and Mann in for a talk with me
Speak to me
- Source: Johnson Library, National Security File, Subject File, Trade, East-West, Vol. I [1 of 2], Box 49. No classification marking.↩
- Not attached but probably Document 173.↩
- Not attached but probably Document 174.↩
- P.L. 89–63, approved on June 30, 1965. (79 Stat. 209)↩
- The President was at the LBJ Ranch in Texas most of Tuesday, July 6, but had a breakfast meeting with the legislative leaders at the White House the following morning beginning at 8:50 a.m. (Johnson Library, President’s Daily Diary) No further record of this meeting has been found.↩
- None of the options is checked.↩