Philadelphia Bulletin, February 27, 1943.

"The importance of post-war trade agreements in Europe and Asia was stressed by John W. Hanes, former Assistant Secretary of the Treasury, in an address before the Pennsylvania Economy League at the Midday Club last night.

"Depicting indescribably horrible conditions' in Europe and Asia after this war, Hanes declared this country must devise means of relieving the suffering populations and restoring order. He cited the case of Russia, which will be in need of industrial machinery and will only be able to pay for it in goods shipped here or to some other country having a trade balance with this country that could be turned over to the Russians.

The fundamental story is the same from every devastated area,' continued Hanes. 'We have our choice of making long time hand-outs or of taking pay. If we want pay and the friendship of the peoples, we had better not exclude the goods they have to sell.

"This is just one application of what Secretary Hull has been telling us and trying to carry out on our behalf ever since 1934. His trade-agreements program is nothing in the world except an effort, patiently and carefully conducted, to reduce trade barriers in both directions by negotiations and agreement, and so let private traders operate, let more goods move, more people make a living, and prosperity and peace develop.

"It is simple, it makes sense, it works, and it doesn't take any big bureaucracy to run it nor any big appropriation. His program will be up again this spring in Congress, and there may be a fight. I am convinced that he and the trade-agreements program deserve the best support we can give them.'"

Gazette, Kalamazoo, Mich., February 22, 1943.

"Frederick E. Hasler, president of the Pan-American Society, accuses 'selfish interests and isolationists in Congress' of promoting a movement to block renewal of the Reciprocal Trade Agreements Act which is due to expire a few months from now. "This movement must be stopped at all costs, before its virus is allowed to create suspicion abroad of the sincerity of our policies in regard to international trade,' Mr. Hasler declares, adding that the Trade Agreements Act 'may well serve as a pattern to implement the principles of mutual trade aid agreed upon in the Atlantic Charter.'

"To speak thus favorably of the reciprocal trade policy is not to contend that it has worked perfectly in every instance or that it has accomplished all that its more hopeful advocates have expected. Yet if the movement to block renewal of the Agreements Act is essentially a movement to put more restraints on international commerce in the future and commit this Nation of ours to a policy of economic isolation, the warning sounded by Mr. Hasler must be recognized as sound and timely. We ought to know by this time that there is a definite and inevitable relationship between international political affairs and international economic affairs. We ought to know that if we are going to have a peaceful world when this war is over we must have a world reasonably free of the perils of economic warfare. And we ought to know, too, that no nation really can promote its own best economic interests through a policy of narrow isolation, any more than it can promote its own peace and welfare by that method.

Seattle Star, February 13, 1943.

"Wendell Willkie did a good job last Thursday night in his Indianapolis speech in summoning from the Republican pantheon such worthies as Blaine, McKinley, and Taft to support the reciprocal trade policy. "Isolation is no longer possible or desirable.

* We must not repose

*

why

in fancied security that we can forever sell everything and buy little or nothing. The expansion of our trade and commerce is a pressing problem. should they not be employed to extend and promote our markets abroad.' "All of which will be even more pertinent in the future than when President McKinley said it. We have suffered from world depression and world war caused in part by the trade conflict of American high tariff, British imperial-preference and Germany hegemony systems.

"America cannot profit by going back to that.

"There is room for legitimate debate on the details of past reciprocal treaties, and the application of this policy in the future. But certainly experience has taught us that the general policy is sound.

"That a Republican majority will challenge the renewal of these treatiesand thus raise the charge of isolationism at a moment when there is virtually no commercial foreign trade anyway-seems improbable."

"Diplomatic peace and economic warfare cannot live side by side; if we want a market in China, Russia, India, and other nations for the goods we can produce the best, obviously we must not bar those nations from our own market. If we are going to fight as a world Nation, we must trade like one as well.' "Secretary Hull, author of the reciprocal trade treaty? No.

"Some professional tariff reformer? No.

"The president of the National Association of Manufacturers, Frederick C. Crawford, speaking before the Detroit Economics Club.

"And for good measure, Mr. Crawford puts the National Association of Manufacturers on record against such world trade barriers as monopoly, international cartels, and patent-license agreements which curb competition.”

Christian Science Monitor, February 13, 1943 (Boston).

"Next to a more active sense of brotherhood-to supply an indispensable lubricant for any machinery of a better world order-freer trade is the most essential ingredient of a sound peace. And re-education of high protectionist opinion in the United States is a primary step toward freer trade. Wendell Willkie deserves the thanks of peace lovers for boldly seeking to save the Republican Party from an isolationist, high tariff policy.

"He made a shrewd approach in his Lincoln Day speech

by invoking the friendliness of Republicans like McKinley, Blaine, and Taft for reciprocal trade policies. * *

"But the core of this question is presented in the statement: 'If we are going to advocate freedom to trade, we must recognize that this is a two-way proposition.' Carried out, this means that the United States must be ready to import many things which can be produced more cheaply abroad-thereby taking payment for surpluses of goods which it can produce most efficiently. That is what producers who compete with the imports try to avoid. And that is what the Republican Party has usually helped them do by raising the tariff.

"There is some hope that hard experience and an improved understanding of economic laws is bringing many Republicans to see how the Nation as a whole can be injured by protecting uneconomic producers. * Mr. Willkie's plea

*

to his party is timely and should receive serious consideration from all Americans who see how vital freer trade is to a sound peace."

Cleveland Plain Dealer, February 17, 1943.

"Out of all the welter of public expression on the subject of post-war planning, one thought stands out above all others. It is that the peace and prosperity of the world is dependent upon the abandonment of economic nationalism in favor of freer markets and the widest possible exchange of goods and services.

"This doctrine of wider and freer trade has recently been espoused in circles in this country where until a decade ago, or even more recently, little was heard of any economic philosophy except that of maintaining the American wage system and protecting the American standard of living by means of high protective tariffs.

"Americans who have known something of the part played in the tariff controversy over the last 50 years by the National Association of Manufacturers must have read with amazement what Frederick C. Crawford, president of the N. A. M. said Monday in an address before the Detroit Economic Club:

"If we are going to fight as a world nation we must trade like one as well. Diplomatic peace and economic warfare cannot live side by side.

"From quite a different source came just a day or two earlier a very similar expression. R. G. Casey, British Minister of State in the Middle East, in a discussion of means to maintain peace when the present war is over, said:

"I believe nations must be willing to give up some part of their nationalism in the common interest-indeed in the selfish interest-to insure peace. No nation can get rich at the expense of others and international arrangements must be designed toward an expanding world economy, in the fruits of which all will share.'"

Portland Oregonian, February 7, 1943.

"The Portland League of Women Voters, in company with leagues all around the country, is very much concerned about the rising tide of isolationism in American thinking, particularly as it shows itself in the discussion of post-war problems.

"Fourteen league members, under the direction of Mrs. Margaret M. Sharp, foreign policy chairman, will visit men's luncheon groups, women's clubs, and other organizations to rally public feeling behind a policy of international cooperation. The speakers will particularly emphasize the lend-lease agreements, which are forming the basis of the United States post-war policy, and will urge support of the Reciprocal Trade Agreements Act, which comes up for renewal by Congress in June.

Evening News, Newark, N. J., February 18, 1943.

"It is not even now too early for American business to realize that the days of high tariff walls are over and that in the post-war era it will have to be internationally minded.

*

"When the Hawley-Smoot tariff, the highest in our history, was in the making in 1930 the most ardent champions of soaring duties were American manufacturers. They wanted no competition from abroad. They were not receptive to the argument that only through furnishing goods and services to us could our debtor nations raise the wherewithal to pay the interest, much less principal. Or if it were so, they did not care, so long as the tariff assured them high prices for their output. They preached the doctrine that a nation could be substantially self-sufficient.

"What if a foreign country did produce something better than we could-we could use substitutes, couldn't we? Advocacy of this principle of substitution flowed over into other than manufacturing fields. Orchardists told the country we ought actually to bar bananas by a duty that would make them too costly to import. If we didn't have bananas on our tables, their argument ran, we could eat oranges and apples the year round and more melons in their season. The idea of penalizing the people to make profits for group interests ran riot through the Congress

**

*

Editorial from the New York Times of February 12, 1943.

"MR. WILLKIE IN INDIANA

"Speaking last night on home ground in Indiana, Wendell Willkie had some useful things to say to a Republican audience about the folly of Republican tariff policy in recent years. He underscored his remarks by quoting from a Republican oracle on tariff matters, President McKinley. McKinley believe in 'protectionism,' but McKinley saw also the need of reciprocity in a world in which distance was being annihilated by invention. One of his statements on this subject, quoted last night by Mr. Willkie, might have been written yesterday. In it he said:

"After all, how near to one another is every part of the world. Modern inventions have brought into close relation widely separated people. **** Geographic and political divisions will continue to exist, but distances have been effaced. Swift ships and swift trains are becoming cosmopolitan. * * *

Isolation is no longer possible or desirable.

*

* *

Reciprocity is the natural
The period of

outgrowth of our wonderful industrial development. exclusiveness is past. The expansion of our trade and commerce is the pressing problem.'

"In this clear vision lay the origins of the reciprocal tariff policy so hopefully developed by McKinley, Blaine, and Taft, and then so recklessly thrown away by latter-day Republicans. It remained for Secretary Hull to revive reciprocity. And when he did so, in the early years of the Roosevelt administration, the Republicans in Congress fought him tooth and nail. They were still fighting him tooth and nail when the war came and lend-lease took the place of foreign trade.

"Mr. Willkie urges his Indiana colleagues to look ahead to the day when lend-lease will end and when, as McKinley put it more than 40 years ago, 'the expansion of our trade and commerce' will again become 'the pressing problem.' Mr. Willkie pleads with his party to come out of the economic isolationism in which it has lived for 20 years. He urges it to face the fact that foreign trade is necessarily a two-way process, and the further fact that the almost inevitable alternative to the shriveling away of foreign trade is more

'regimentation,' more 'subsidies' and more governmental control of production here at home.

"This is a sound and far-sighted point of view, and Mr. Willkie deserves thanks for the consistency and the untiring vigor with which he keeps pounding away at this important theme. No man in the country is doing so much at this moment to prepare American opinion for an understanding of the international economic issues with which we shall be confronted in the post-war world.” The Birmingham News, February 13, 1943.

66

"HOW MR. WILLKIE CAN HELP

Speaking at the annual Lincoln's Day banquet of the Women's Republican Club of Indianapolis, the Republican Presidential nominee of 1940 offered as his contribution the thought that the solution of to the problem lies in ‘expansion and development within and without our borders and in marshalling all our economic forces-agriculture, management, and capital-in harmony and cooperation.' There would be 'an enormous multiplication of markets for goods and manufactures of all sorts,' he said, if the United States cooperated politically and economically with other nations, trading with them and showing them methods for their own development.

"Unquestionably, there is a great deal of merit in what Mr. Willkie says; but we cannot refrain from pointing out that the thought is not exactly original with him at least, not to the extent that it is quoted in the press dispatches. It is essentially the same idea that has been sponsored steadily by the Roosevelt administration, and, for that matter, by the Democratic Party traditionally. It is the same idea that is incorporated in Secretary Hull's reciprocal trade program. At least in part, the same idea is reflected in this administration's good neighbor' policy, which has served the United States and our Latin American neighbors so well during this emergency by strengthening hemisphere solidarity. If Mr. Willkie really wants to help this program along, he should try to convince his fellow Republicans of its soundness. The Republicans are the ones who have always wanted to raise tariff walls higher and higher and shut off world trade. Let Mr. Willkie try to convert them. He does not have to convert the rest of us."

Cleveland News, February 8, 1943.

"KEEP TRADE CHANNELS OPEN

"One partial casualty of war is Secretary Hull's reciprocal trade agreements program. The principle remains sound. The personnel is largely intact, being busy on lend-lease business. It is a casualty only to the extent that trade volume is sharply down and negotiation of new agreements is suspended.

"Between now and June, Congress must decide whether the authority to continue this program is to be extended, and there is thought to be some danger that an effort will be made to block that extension.

"This would be a mistake, second in gravity only to a refusal to extend the Lend-Lease Act. If there is any foundation stone for lasting peace, it is a volume of international trade never approached in history; and no one has presented a trade stimulant of greater promise than the reciprocal agreements program.

"Nearly 10 years ago, Congress authorized the President to undertake this program, whereby tariff rates might be altered to the extent of 50 percent without check or approval by Congress.

"The agreements are such that all parties thereto are encouraged to lower their tariff rates and abolish other barriers. They open the way to circular trade patterns, so that each country may broaden its markets and increase its imports without discrimination. These agreements are death to economic totalitarianism.

"The League of Women Voters has dedicated February to arousing support for an extension of this program, which fact should be proof enough, if any were needed, that the reciprocal trade agreement is a weapon for national security, not a partisan issue.

"To extend the program is simply to take out a minimum of insurance against one kind of destructive post-war chaos. All the arguments for this technique in time of peace are of double or triple potency in time of war.

"The authority for reciprocal trade agreements should be extended without alteration in any way. If post-war conditions require changes, they can be made when the need is shown. Meantime, we can't afford to lose during the fighting any ground already gained."

Gazette, Little Rock, Ark., January 7, 1943.

"The professions that have been made about greater freedom for trade among the nations as a major measure for a post-war world will have a test when the new Congress acts upon the question of renewing the President's power to negotiate reciprocal trade agreements with other countries.

"If Congress, in the midst of the war, should set its face against even limited lowering of Hawley-Smoot tariff barriers by reciprocal trade agreements such as Secretary of State Hull has negotiated, what would become of all the talk about international economic collaboration after the war, and of the tentative post-war plans which the United States has taken a leading part in shaping?"

The Florida Times-Union (Jacksonville), February 4, 1943.

"The Trade Agreements Act stems from the depression, and was developed with the idea of aiding economic recovery. That need is for the time being eliminated. America is doing a tremendous business with foreign nations, but it is a strictly one-way business, with the United States paying the bills. This cannot, of course, go on indefinitely. The illusory sort of prosperity we are now enjoying is a product of the war, and when the war ends we will have to start taking more imports in payment for our exports, or else we'll stop exporting.

"If we stop exporting, the United States will be forced upon a basis of selfcontainment. That in turn involves a lowering of our living standards by at least 10 percent.

"Such is the price of economic isolation. Are the Republicans for that?" St. Louis Post-Dispatch, January 16, 1943.

"Congressman Knutson of Minnesota has introduced a bill to terminate our 25 reciprocal-trade treaties, and Secretary of State Hull has paused long enough to remark that he will "have plenty to say" about the proposal in due time. This sounds to us as if the Secretary plans to let his Tennessee fightin' spirit get up good and plenty before he wades in. And that is all right, too."

Times-Dispatch (Richmond, Va.), February 14, 1943.

"The power to draw up reciprocal-trade pacts with other nations, first granted to President Roosevelt in 1934, and renewed in 1937 and 1940, expires in June. Unless this authority is granted the President again between now and then, the whole important trend toward lowered trade barriers which has been manifest in this country for the past 9 years will be thrown into reverse, and we shall give notice to the world, even before the end of this war, that we intend to withdraw into our shell once more, and to bank on high tariffs, nationalism, and isolationism to promote our prosperity and stave off a third World War.

"The Hull reciprocal-trade treaties constitute about the mildest and most obviously sensible means of promoting the flow of international commerce which could be imagined.

"But now the whole program is threatened with defeat at the hands of the Republicans and a group of high-tariff Democrats. A greater calamity could hardly occur during the next 6 months, and it is of the utmost importance that all possible arguments be marshaled on behalf of sanity on this issue.

"In 1938, a Gallup poll showed the South to be 92 percent behind the general principles on which the Hull treaties are based. There is no reason to believe that sentiment on the issue has changed in this region since that time. No part of America is more dependent on foreign markets than the South. But the arguments on behalf of lower tariffs which David L. Cohn marshals so effectively in the current Atlantic Monthly, and which are republished, in part, on this page, apply to all America, as well as to the land below the Potomac. May our Congressmen heed them in this critical hour!"

Times, Watertown, N. Y., February 12, 1943.

* "Of course, Mr. Wilkie is right. There has been some talk in Washington that the Republican minority in Congress will oppose vigorously