U.S. TARIFF POLICY

Press, Volume LXXXIX, Issue 27148, 18 September 1953, Page 9

U.S. TARIFF POLICY

Mutual Reduction Proposal (N.Z. Press Association—Copyright) (Rec. 9 pan.) NEW YORK, September 16. The United States has decided to propose linking reductions of United States tariffs with a generm lowering the tariffs i by the other principal trading nations in the free world, according to a “New York Times” report today. The report, which comes from a “New York Times” correspondent in Geneva, says the State Department will submit a proposal to the Joint Commission, headed by Mr Clarence Randall, which is studying United States international economic policies. The correspondent said the proposal was new in the sense that it had never been published or introduced officially into discussions of possible commerical policy for the United States .in Washington. A great deal of the work, however, had been done on the proposal since the original French memorandum outlining a new principle of mutual tariff concessions was introduced to the contracting parties of the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade in December, 1952.

“It now looks good enough, and practical enough, for the State Department to consider it worth placing before the Randall Commission as a possible new line of tariff policy, to replace the long-established reciprocal trade agreements procedure associated with democratic administrations,” the correspondent says. The correspondent said the essence of the proposal, as it now stood, was that instead of negotiating reciprocal tariff reductions, in the sense of swapping one cut for another, nations should agree to a mutual system of tariff adjustment. The object of the system would be to get all participating countries to reduce the average levels of import duties on each of 10 categories of products by 30 per cent, over a threeyea'r period. “There is considerable concern in international circles interested in improved conditions for world trade generally, lest advocates of lower Uni? ted States tariffs concentrate so hard on justifying such a move in terms of the United States’s own interest that they may force the adoption of policies that will in effect throw away the tremendous bargaining power of the United States without using it to persuade other countries to loosen up on their import barriers. “A mutual system of tariff reductions offers the United States the possibility of trying moves to reduce its own tariffs, if Congress finally decides that there should be such moves, to similar moves in other countries. ■

. “ ‘lf we are going to do it anyway, wet might as well get something out of it,’ is an apt summary by one American technician of the reasons why a mutual system of tariff reductions might possibly appeal to the Randall Commission, if anything short of extreme protectionist views dominate its deliberations.”