Treaty Trade

Most frequent criticism of the Trade Agreements Act of 1934, under which Cordell Hull has patiently woven a network of reciprocal trade treaties with 16 foreign countries, is that tariff concessions granted to any signatory country are automatically extended to 70-odd non-signatory countries with which the U. S. has "most-favored-nation" agreements. From the standpoint of Free Trader Hull, this is the strongest point of his policy since generalizing concessions tends to increase the volume of world trade. But it has given many a Hull critic an opportunity to argue that with U. S. tariff favors so lightly won the non-signatory nations of the world will not feel the need to give as well as take. Just as this criticism was being aired again in the Satevepost by Kansas' Republican Senator Author Capper. Mr. Hull was last week able to present a highly dramatic refutation.

Simultaneously Mr. Hull announced at a State Department press conference and Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain announced to the House of Commons that a U. S.-British reciprocal trade agreement, after a year of pourparlers in London and Washington, was at last ready to be hatched. Specifically, Mr. Hull asked all interested parties to submit to the State Department's Committee for Reciprocity Information by Dec. 16 their suggestions for bargaining. Thereafter formal notice of the negotiations together with a list of products to be discussed will be forthcoming.

Since observers in both capitals were convinced that neither cautious Mr. Hull nor cautious Mr. Chamberlain would have made his preliminary announcement unless each had the end of the negotiations clearly in sight, friends of Mr. Hull joyously proclaimed that Great Britain, the biggest foreign customer of the U. S. and thus the belated keystone of the Hull reciprocal arch, was for all practical purposes already in place.

For most of this year discussion of the keystone treaty has proceeded at a tepid pace with Secretary Hull frankly in the suitor's role, Great Britain favorable to an agreement but hesitant to disturb the network of preference agreements with her Dominions which followed the Ottawa Conference of 1932. These agreements were discussed by the British Government with Dominion representatives at the Imperial Conference after the Coronation, apparently without settling which part of the Empire should make the necessary concessions to the U. S. But during the past troubled month of European diplomacy the British Cabinet suddenly took the U. S. treaty conversations out of the hands of the Board of Trade, proceeded to get down to business.

In making last week's announcement, which followed a visit to Secretary Hull by British Ambassador Ronald Lindsay, Prime Minister Chamberlain indicated to the Commons that his Government was not so much approving a trade agreement as trading an economic treaty in the interests of immediately valuable political solidarity. "I feel sure," hinted Mr. Chamberlain, "that the House will warmly welcome this further step toward an agreement between the two Governments." Tory Oppositionist Leopold S. Amery promptly warned a meeting of the Empire Industries' Association: "I can hardly imagine that such an agreement is likely to revolutionize the American outlook on foreign affairs, so that she will be willing to do battle either for us or for the League of Nations, in Europe or the Far East."

Aim of the U. S. bargainers will be to reverse the trend which carried U. S. exports to Great Britain from $848,000,000 in 1929 to $440,122,000 last year.

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