AMERICAN TARIFF

Hawke's Bay Tribune, Volume XXIII, Issue 105, 15 April 1933, Page 8

AMERICAN TARIFF

POWERS FOR PRESIDENT LEGISLATION ASKED FOR. NEGOTIATION OE TREATIES. By Telegraph—Press Assn.—Copyright NEW YORK, April 13. The “New York Times’ ” Washington correspondent says that tho President’s request for the broadest possible authority for negotiating international trade agreements similar in character to the “dictatorial’' powers ho has used in meeting the domestic emergency will be sent to Congress in the next few days. The major outline of the measure has been completed, aud the details are expected to be sufficiently agreed on for the President to write a special message to Congress. Tariff experts, Congressional leaders, State and Commerce Department officials have all been busy on the project, which Mr Roosevelt desires to be enacted before the representatives of 42 nations gather here for discussions preliminary to the general Economic Conference. The President., under the bill, will seek the following powers: (1) Sole authority to change existing tariff rates by executive proclamation, subject only to submitting the changes in a report to Congress. (2) Power for negotiating a multi lateral treaty at the World Economic Conference, whereby all tariff duties would be decreased horizontally. (3) Authority to make bi-lateral agreements for reductions beyond the multi-lateral horizontal reductions to the maximum of 50 per cent, permitted under the flexible provisions of the present Tariff Act. (4) Authority- to enunciate a policy of “bargaining” with other nations in adjusting tariff rates as well as the “difference in the cost of production” followed under the present Tariff Act. The bill, if it can find a way around the constitutional inhibitions involved, will probably include authority for the President to effect even greater than tho 50 per cent, reductions prescribed in the present law or to transfer articles from the dutiable list to the free list and vice versa. The principal involved is how far Congress can go in delegating its authority to the President to change the tariff rates without, denying its own constitutional mandate to fix rates, for the Government’s revenue. One of the other outstanding difficulties is the President’s campaign pledge given at Baltimore on October 25, that ho would not lower agricultural tariffs. State department experts found this an embarrassing complication, particularly relating to the possible trade agreement with the Argentine and Canada, which are interested primarily in lowering the rates in primary products.