U.S. Labour Wants Trade Protection

Press, Volume XCVIII, Issue 28983, 26 August 1959, Page 18

U.S. Labour Wants Trade Protection

ISuecially written tor N £ P A nu tKANK OLIVER.I

(Rec. 8 p.m.) WASHINGTON, August 21. American labour is threatening to go isolationist again as it did in the twenties when it backed “buy American” campaigns and pressed for high tariffs and tight restrictions on immigration.

i The Coi-Afl federation is busy (modifying its policy of support I for the Government's reciprocal I trade programme. It is getting | ready a demand that there be 1 new legislation to safeguard domestic production “against inroads from foreign sweatshops.” This rather astonishing proposal | has the backing of Mr George Meany, president of the great labour federation. It is astonishing, because over recent years : the federation has backed reciprocal trade treaties and has ibeen. generally speaking, liberalminded in its approach to foreign trade. The new approach and the new policy, which seems certain to emerge from a meeting of the Coi-Afl, runs counter to the policies of the Democratic Party as a whole and counter to the overseas trade policies of the Eisenhower Administration. It lines up what has always been considered the progressive labour movement with the ideas and views of the most conservative and reactionary Renublicans and Southern Democrats. “Alarmed” at Imports American labour is said to have become “alarmed" by recent increases in the import of goods from overseas, allegedly from countries with low wage standards. The four key unions behind this move are the International Ladies’ Garment Workers, the Amalgamated Clothing Workers of America, the Textile Workers’ Union and the United Hatters, Cap and Millinery Workers. All four have been long identified with free trade policies. Thus the new move is quite revolutionary as far as these four unions are concerned. The excuse for this great change is the alleged failure of many foreign countries to give their workers “an equitable share in the fruits their economic progress has created” and thus to become a serious threat to the stability of United States industries. The resolution which the Cio-Afl will consider and vote on seeks to erase the isolationist complexion of the move by saying, aprpos of no-one knows what, that the federation has endorsed the Marshall Plan and other measures for economic assistance to revitalise the economy of other nations. What the federation wants to see is passage of a new law “limiting the flow of foreign products—a bill which would give the United States Tariff Commission power to determine normal levels of domestic output of goods on the basis of past records of actual production and the anticipated needs of our growing population.” Labour’s Proposals Labour wants to see established import quotas to protect those levels of domestic production Quotas would be governed by the difference between the protected rate of United States output and the most r.ecent total consumption rate for each specific item. Goods above the quota, says labour, could be imported, but would be subject to a high tariff rate and the tariff rate would take into account wage differentials between this country and the exporting nation. Extra penalties would be imposed on goods made under “substandard conditions.” As wages abroad went up, American import duties would go down. This, says American labour hopefully, woud provide an incentive to foreign manufacturers to raise their pay scales without increasing the delivered cost of their product in the United States. This may sound rather Gilbertian, but the labour federation sees no humour in thus trying to set up a strange new bureaucracy to make detailed studies of American production and consumption, to keep tabs on 50 economies round the world and to assess ‘‘real” wages in every one in respect of everything made for foreign export. This vast machinery is contemplated—and this seems even more Gilbertian—to safeguard the poor American worker against one country and one tiny island — Japan and Hong Kong to be specific. These areas, say Labour spokesmen, have been creating “trade headaches” of late by exporting hats and clothing to the United States.

The resolution seems certain to gain favour and then the pressure will be on Congress to pass it. Nothing is likely to happen in the current session, which by hook or by crook will end before Mr Khrushchev arrives in order to avoid giving him the usual invitation to visiting heads of Government to address a joint session of the House and Senate.

But the pressure will not favour it. The President has been a staunch upholder of the reciprocal

trade treaties and of increased and extended foreign trade in the seven years he has been in the White House. Moreover, he may well be asking for even more foreign trade next year. One practical certainty is that something needs to be done to strengthen Latin - American economies and what naturally follows is that some imports of the thus extended economies will have to be bought. If there is an industrial worker in Latin America who can match American rates of pay, he has never been heard of and the resolution now being considered would seem, if it became law. to block out any and all Latin-American products that compete with domestic production. U.S.-Soviet Trade The resolution could also cause embarrassment to the Administration elsewhere. It is widely agreed that one subject Mr Eisenhower and Mr Khrushchev will discuss is increased Ameri-can-Soviet trade. The Russian leader wants to buy American goods, but he also wants to sell Russian goods and the press is saying that undoubtedly the President will lend a sympathetic ear to this for he tends to favour East-West trade in principle and feels it would be good to have more normal trade relations with Russia. The magazine ‘‘Business Week” thinks what the President might do or could do would be to liberalise the American ‘•positive list” of things which cannot be shipped to Russia and to grant Soviet exports most favoured nation tariff treatment. H? might also persuade Congress to lift the import embargo on Russian goods, including crabmeat and several types of furs. If hats from Hong Kong and kimonos from Japan can make American labour urge quotas and high tariffs, any such suggestion from the Administration about the goods of the ‘‘slave state” Russia could possibly cause ideological apoplexy in the great federation of American labour.