Toward Freer Trade

An expectant stillness, the silence of men aware that they are witnesses at a moment of history, gripped the House of Representatives one morning last week as members waited for Speaker Sam Rayburn to announce the result of the roll-call vote on the session's most important bill. "The yeas were 317," he intoned, "and the nays were 98." Members gasped and whistled: the House had passed the Administration's reciprocal trade bill by a surprisingly decisive margin.

The House had done much more than okay another lease on life for the Trade Agreements Act, originally passed in 1934 and extended ten times since. Taking a long stride toward freer trade and away from isolationism, the House extended the act for five years instead of the previous maximum of three, granted the President broader trade powers than ever before, including authority to pare tariffs by as much as 10% in a single year (but not more than 25% over the five years). "This is an historic action," said Arkansas Democrat Wilbur D. Mills, the Democratic strategist who guided the bill to victory. "It tells the world that we are not pulling back."

Early this year, with the U.S. worried about unemployment at home, the outlook for freer trade seemed bleak. Only three weeks before the House voted, it looked as if the Administration bill was still in serious trouble. What routed the protectionists against apparent odds was a shrewd, hard-hitting campaign waged by an alliance between the Administration and House leaders of both parties. The major influences:

Dwight Eisenhower labeled reciprocal trade one of the session's three "imperatives," pleaded his case in speeches, meetings with congressional leaders, private sessions with visitors. He got influential businessmen to send the Congressmen letters plugging the bill. He supplied Democrat Mills and House Minority Leader Joseph W. Martin with powerful ammunition: individual letters from the President warning that adoption of the Simpson bill would be a "tragic blunder."

The White House put so much behind-the-scenes heat on wavering Republican Congressmen (who voted 2 to 1 for the bill) that baffled Tariff Lobbyist Oscar R. Strackbein, after betting a month before on a victory for the protectionists, glumly observed: "I have never seen such pressure since the days of Franklin Roosevelt." In the last days before the floor debate, Republicans trudged into Dick Simpson's office to ask him to release them from their promises to vote with him. A vote against reciprocal trade, one explained, would cost him White House support for a bill that he badly wanted for his district. Other helpful Administration tactics: weakening the tariff urge among Congressmen from oil and mining states by announcing a program of voluntary oil-import curbs and a plan to stockpile up to 150,000 tons of U.S.-mined copper (see BUSINESS).

Wilbur Mills, one of Capitol Hill's ablest legislators and a likely prospect to succeed Rayburn as Democratic Speaker, staked his prestige on the Administration bill, although a defeat on the floor could have damaged his speakership prospects. Although Ways & Means Chairman Mills was sometimes tempted to settle for a weaker, safer bill, he pushed the full Administration bill through his committee when the Administration refused to back down, conceded the protectionists only two minor amendments.

In steering the bill to the final overwhelming vote, Mills showed a fine flair for strategy. The gravest danger to any reciprocal trade bill is not that it will be killed outright but that it will be thrown open to logrolling, high-tariff amendments on the floor. In 1955, reciprocal trade escaped this fate by only a single vote. To avoid the danger, Mills made a risky deal with Pennsylvania Republican Richard M. Simpson, the House's No. 1 protectionist. Simpson agreed to a "closed rule," i.e., no floor amendments, and Mills in return agreed to let Simpson propose his own substitute bill on the floor of the House. Mills gambled that Simpson would present a bill too harsh for the House to swallow. Simpson did just that, lost by a vote of 234 to 147.

Joe Martin used his leverage as minority leader to pry many a House Republican out of the Simpson camp. He also brought off a coup that wrecked Dick Simpson's strategy. As his final shot, in case his substitute bill failed to carry, Simpson planned to offer a motion to send the Administration bill back to committee with instructions to report out a three-year compromise bill. Aware that a lot of Congressmen would find this middle way appealing, Wilbur Mills thought up a gambler's ploy, asked Joe Martin to execute it. The scheme: persuade New York's ancient (82) Republican Dan Reed to pull his seniority on Simpson and offer a simple--but too drastic--motion to recommit the bill, i.e., kill it for this session. Since only one motion to recommit could be offered under House rules. Reed's motion would block Simpson's. Playing on Reed for three days. Martin patiently lured him into the trap. It worked. The House slapped Reed down, 268 to 146.

Sinclair Weeks, as Secretary of Commerce, tirelessly argued the Administration case on Capitol Hill in a five-month campaign. The Administration chose Weeks as the No. 1 salesman in a deliberate effort to get the "foreign policy" tag off reciprocal trade and stress the program's value to the U.S.'s own economy. At Weeks' orders, Assistant

Commerce Secretary Henry Kearns drafted reports detailing in hard figures how foreign trade helps various congressional districts--and each Congressman got a copy of the report on his district. When stubborn Henry Kearns rubbed Congressmen the wrong way, Deputy Under Secretary of State Douglas Dillon moved in quietly and effectively to smooth things over. A longtime high-tariff man. ex-Massachusetts Manufacturer (United-Carr Fastener Corp.) Weeks was all the more valuable a campaigner because he is Washington's most conspicuous example of an old protectionist converted to the freer trade cause by the eloquence of facts.

Working together, these four helped bring about one of the House's finest hours. Said ex-Protectionist Weeks accurately after the voting: "This nation's and the free world's hopes for unity, economic power and lasting peace are strengthened by today's great action."

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