Renewal and Reassurance

Today the House Ways and Means Committee will begin hearings on the renewal of the Reciprocal Trade Agreement Act, initiated during the Great Depression to revive our economy and to relieve the economic nationalism which had contributed so greatly to the causes of World War I and the failure of the peace that followed. The third of President Wilson's "Fourteen Points" had been "the removal, so far as possible, of all economic barriers and the establishment of an equality of trade conditions among all the nations." But later events served only to mock his effort to eliminate the economic causes of war. The United States resisted with firm Republican resolution all the blandishments and "war mongering propaganda" that sought to make her realize that she was part of the world. Deploring the failure of bad "hired" from the United States, our government proceeded to make repayment an impossibility by erecting a series of trade barriers which were to help domestic industries by penalizing export industries and were to protect labor by raising the cost of living.

Such trends towards economic nationalism were stimulated all over the world on the advent of the Great Depression. In 1934, however, with the guidance of Secretary Hull, Congress initiated the Reciprocal Trade Agreements program. The Act giving the President the power to reduce American tariffs by as much as fifty per cent in return for reciprocal concessions by other nations, was a first step towards the elimination of those barriers which had so crippled international trade. As such, it was a major contribution to American recovery; while trade revived with the passing of depression, our trade with the sixteen agreement countries from 1933 to 1937 rose 43 per cent while increasing only 11 per cent with non-agreement states. Our nation enjoyed the economic efficiencies and stimuli made possible a freer international trade.

These agreements have proven their economic worth; the necessity for their renewal, however, is more than economic. As Secretary of State Cordell Hull has declared, the continuance of the program would demonstrate the sincere desire of the United States to participate in a post-war collective security system, to bear its just share of responsibility in world affairs. Facilitating the readjustment of this nation's economy to a peace-time basis, extension of the program will serve to assure our Allies that the United States will not repeat its mistake of 1919, will not ensure international anarchy by a policy of isolationist antarchy. In 1940, the policy was a party issue; in 1943, the United States Congress, by an overwhelming vote for passage, should evince its readiness to bring the United States into the political and economic community of the world.