179. Editorial Note
As part of its study of the U.S. foreign policymaking community, the Commission on the Organization of the Government for the Conduct of Foreign Policy (the Murphy Commission) conducted an extensive inquiry into the organization of international economic policy. Recognizing the increasing scope and complexity of international economic relations, the Murphy Commission sought to give U.S. international economic policy “coherence and design.” Its final report, issued [Page 613] on June 27, 1975, recommended a mixture of fixed organizational structures and flexible processes with the aim of encouraging “a consistent general framework in foreign economic policy responsive to and integrated with vital considerations of domestic and foreign policy” and permitting “a broad sharing of authority and responsibility for the formulation of policy, while providing protection against narrow and isolated views becoming dominant.”
The Murphy Commission recommended a raft of reforms. It recommended the creation of a position of senior assistant to the President to act as the central staff member for both domestic and foreign economic policy, with membership in the National Security Council, the Domestic Council, and the Economic Policy Board. The commission also advocated establishing an International Economic Policy Advisory Board, a senior group of experts drawn from the private sector to periodically consult with the President and an independent study group under the auspices of the Council of Economic Advisers. In order to merge domestic and foreign policy considerations more closely, it recommended the creation of the Subcouncil on International Economic Policy, responsible to the NSC, Domestic Council, and EPB. This new subcouncil, which would replace the Council on International Economic Policy and be composed of representatives from the Departments of State, Treasury, Commerce, and Agriculture and the CEA, would be tasked with creating committees and task forces to assure interagency cooperation.
On overseas representation, the Murphy Commission suggested a flexible approach:
“Unlike foreign political policy, where State has virtually exclusive responsibility, the execution of foreign economic policy has been shared to a degree among the Departments of State, Treasury, Agriculture, Commerce, and others, depending on the substance. We believe this is appropriate, both because of the degree of knowledge required in specialized areas and because of the value of direct exposure to foreign concerns for domestically oriented agencies. Moreover, as international economic problems have grown in importance and multilateral diplomacy has increasingly supplanted bilateral negotiations as the main channel of international decision-making, Washington-based officials have assumed a larger role in economic negotiations relative to Embassy personnel. These trends have suggested to some that the time has come when we might appropriately transfer from State and the Foreign Service the bulk of its responsibilities for economic negotiations and reporting.” The commission rejected this line of reasoning, but added, “an attempt to centralize all responsibility for these matters, removing them from economic departments to State, appears impractical and counterproductive in terms of our basic objectives.”
[Page 614]Consequently, the commission supported “flexibility in the use of multiagency participation in policy negotiations and implementation abroad. The State Department must retain overall coordinating responsibility; no international negotiations should proceed without its knowledge and approval. It should normally participate in the manning of international delegations, but need not automatically chair these, depending on the substantive area. Overseas representation of domestic departments should continue in selected areas (e.g., agriculture and finance) so long as their representatives are under the control of the Ambassador,” a recommendation that the commission’s report stated applied specifically to overseas representation of the Department of the Treasury. (Commission on the Organization of the Government for the Conduct of Foreign Policy, pages 55–57, 59–60, 63, and 67–68)
For the commission’s recommendations for other parts of the foreign policymaking apparatus, see Documents 45, 106, and 147.
Copies of the commission’s final report were distributed to the relevant agencies by NSC Staff Secretary Jeanne Davis for comment on July 11. The responses of the Departments of Commerce, Treasury, and the CIEP are in the Ford Library, National Security Council Institutional Files, Box 98, IFG Logged Documents, Murphy Commission—Comments on the Commission Report. See also Document 202.