The Congress: Proud, with Cause

If the 87th Congress is remembered for nothing else, it should rate history’s honor for having passed a foreign trade bill that at long last releases the U.S. from the shackles of protectionism. The same applies to the Kennedy Administration, which patiently but persistently pushed the far-reaching foreign trade bill through Congress that might at any time have balked.

Last week the Senate passed the bill by a surprisingly one-sided vote of 78 to 8. Already approved by the House, it now goes to House-Senate conference and then to President Kennedy for signature —and he can hardly wait to grab hold of his pen.

The bill offers a real and vital departure for U.S. foreign economic policy. Existing reciprocal trade laws, although considered revolutionary when first passed during Franklin Roosevelt’s Administration, have long been as obsolete as the flivver. Economic policy is an obvious and integral part of foreign policy—for which the U.S. Constitution assigned the President responsibility. Yet the reciprocal trade laws allowed the President almost no flexibility. They were studded with “peril point” limitations, dictated by protectionists, that often negated their basic purpose.

No longer. If the new law does not go as far as it might, it nonetheless goes much farther than anyone might have hoped just a few years ago. It gives the President power to cut all existing tariffs by as much as 50%, and to eliminate duties altogether on goods for which the U.S., Great Britain and Europe’s six Common Market nations account for a combined total of 80% of the world export market. It also provides for retraining U.S. workers displaced by competition from foreign industries.

President Kennedy had every right to be proud of the foreign trade bill. Said he: “The new legislation gives us the opportunity to develop closer and more harmonious trade relations with the Common Market and other nations throughout the world.”