Reciprocity Extended

Pundits love to point out that party lines have long since been obliterated, that on most major issues both major parties can be found on both sides of the fence. True as this is on questions of social and political liberalism, the U. S. Senate proved last week that there is still one class of issues on which party lines hold as well as ever: questions of economic liberalism. Before the Senate was a bill, already passed by the House, to renew for another three years the President's power (due to expire in June) to make reciprocal trade agreements.

Senator Pat Harrison made the Administration's chief point that 16 such trade agreements have been made and since 1934 trade with those nations has increased from $1,400,000,000 to $1,900,000,000. Republicans hammered back with the argument that the bill delegated too much power to the President. More point was added by Senator Vandenberg when he said: Since the agreements were made, "our exports to Canada . . . went up 17%, but our imports from Canada . . . went up 30%. Our exports to Cuba went up 11%, but our imports from Cuba went up 19% Our exports to The Netherlands went up 7%, but our imports from The Netherlands went up 22%. Our exports to Sweden went up 9%, but our imports from Sweden went up 21%."

The debate in the Senate then degenerated into the sort of thing that occurred among the builders of the Tower of Babel: the arguers could no longer speak one another's language. In Republican language Senator Vandenberg's figures meant that reciprocal tariff agreements were putting the U. S. on the road to bankruptcy. In Democratic language the same figures meant just the opposite: not only was the U. S. selling more of its products (biggest single U. S. export: cotton), but U. S. investors were finally tending to get something of value (more imports) as return on the $12,000,000,000 of U. S. money they invested abroad mostly in Republican times.

With such a clear-cut division of parties the outcome was obvious. Not a single Republican voted for the bill, but 14 voted against it. They were joined by a handful of Democrats, mostly from sugar and cattle States. Then the big Democratic majority did its work and reciprocal trade agreements were sanctioned for another three years, 58-10-24.

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