JAPAN’S ENTRY TO G.A.T.T.

Press, Volume LXXXIX, Issue 27149, 19 September 1953, Page 7

JAPAN’S ENTRY TO G.A.T.T.

Support For U.S. Plan Expected

(Rec. 7 p.m.) GENEVA, Sept. 17. The eighth session of the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade opened in Geneva today. Many of the 33 member countries are expected to support the United States demand to bring Japan within the agreement. The United States contends that keeping Japan out of G.A.T.T. is tantamount to driving her into the arms of the Soviet Union as a trading outlet. Opposition is expected to the United States suggestion that Japan should become an associate member of G.A.T.T.. enjoying and granting full G.A.T.T. tariff benefits, without first carrying out the tariff negotiations necessary under the agreement’s constitution.

Britain, Australia, South Africa, and France, and perhaps Holland, are opposed to this, and should Japan gain associate membership, they would not grant Japanese goods any G.A.T.T. tariff concessions.

The United States, however, is anxious to cut her dollar commitments in Japan, and to let Japan expand through world trade. All the G.A.T.T. meetings are held in secret, and the session is expected to last for five or six weeks.

Agenda procedure only was discussed today after an opening speech by the chairman, Mr Johan Melander, Norway’s Director of Commercial Policy. Mr Melander said that so long as international trade was tightly controlled in order to protect or discriminate in favour of national sectional interests, economic instability and the gradual decrease of trade must result. However, he said, the removal of barriers to trade would not automatically realise the aims of G.A.T.T., and other international agreements. It was equally important, he said, that the nations should follow sound financial and monetary policies. These considerations should be borne in mind when the time came, as it probably soon would, to review G.A.T.T., and propose any changes needed to make it a more effective instrument.