Mr. ROBERTSON. Of course I admit that; it is the way in which they are used to which I refer. Three years ago Dr. Coulter tried to show that trade with the nonagreement countries had increased faster than the trade with agreement countries, and then he had his own little device by which he took out all the major nonagreement trading countries, either on account of war, internal revolution, or some other excuse, and he put in the record in 1 hour's time figures that it took us 3 weeks to analyze to find out how he got the answer that he gave us. Take, for instance, this statement of the gentleman from California that as soon as we negotiated a reciprocal trade agreement with Venezuela they had promptly imposed an export duty that offset the reduction in the tariff. You, of course, can't keep all those details in your memory.

Mr. GEARHART. I wrote him a letter 10 days ago about it.

Mr. ROBERTSON. And he wrote you a letter in which he said it wasn't true.

Mr. GEARHART. Of which he handed me a copy just now. Do you mean to say he is giving you copies of my letters before I get them myself? I want to know right now if that is the practice of this administration, to give my letters out to everybody else on the Democratic side of this committee.

Mr. ROBERTSON. It is not.

Mr. GEARHART. This letter reached me just 5 minutes ago, handed over the bench.

Mr. ROBERTSON. It reached me after you got yours.

Mr. GEARHART. You had better say that.

Furthermore, the figures I quoted are official figures given to me by the United States Tariff Commission, and not from anybody else. The CHAIRMAN. We want to be fair to everybody.

Mr. REED. I didn't yield for a fight.

The CHAIRMAN. It is pretty hard to listen to everybody at once.
Mr. GEARHART. Sorry.

Mr. ROBERTSON. On page 7 of the letter that was mailed to you, Mr. Gearhart, and a copy just handed to you, you asked the question, if it is true that immediately Venezuela placed an export tariff on the same items, thereby translating American customs receipts into Venezuela customs receipts, and the answer was, "It is not."

Mr. GEARHART. You show a very strange familiarity with that letter, for getting it just 2 minutes ago.

Mr. ROBERTSON. I am familiar with the English language, and it doesn't take me very long to read "It is not," and I don't think it should take you very long to read it and understand it.

In the next paragraph you brought up that same old Dr. John Lee Coulter argument. We analyzed that 3 years ago. It took up hours and pages of the testimony, and we proved it was juggled figures. You claim that under the most-favored-nation treaty Japan had cluttered our market without giving us any concessions. We proved then, and apparently we have got to go through the same process of proving now, that we only give a concession in an agreement to some country which is a principal producer of that item, and that was true with respect to Japan. Where she got the benefit, it applied to only 212 percent in dollars of her total imports, a negligible figure, but it

makes a good argument unless you can follow Dr. John Lee Coulter and show that his figures don't mean anything.

He is one of the cutest figurers we have ever had around here, because he was on the Tariff Commission; he came here 3 years ago as a representative of the National Association of Manufacturers, but I predict he won't be here as their representative this year.

Mr. GEARHART. I beg your pardon; he will be before this committee.

Mr. ROBERTSON. I don't say he won't be before this committee.

Mr. GEARHART. And he will take care of himself before this committee.

Mr. ROBERTSON. I predict he won't appear before this committee speaking for the National Association of Manufacturers in opposition to this program. But let him come. Let him present his figures, and just give us 2 or 3 weeks to trace them around and we will get the answers on them.

Mr. GEARHART. The State Department gives me 5 minutes.

Mr. ROBERTSON. Mr. Chairman, I didn't interrupt the gentleman when he was making his stump speech.

I yield to the gentleman from New York, and I apologize to him. The CHAIRMAN. Mr. Reed.

Are you through?

Mr. ROBERTSON. Yes.

Secretary HULL. Mr. Chairman, I was trying to avoid going back and taking up all the details of these old-time tariff arguments, at least until we could discuss the future situation and have the benefit of the views of members, or at least their inclinations, on those phases. It has not been much easier than to have brought a cartload of documents over here and to have sat here and bandied words back and forth for weeks and months. I have been trying to avoid that, otherwise I might have taken more time.

Mr. REED. I ask unanimous consent at this point to insert the table from which I believe Mr. Gearhart was asking the Secretary questions; also another set of figures showing the tariffs of other countries, relating to the subjects on which the tariff is imposed.

The CHAIRMAN. Without objection, that will be inserted in the record.

(The figure for the United States is taken as 100 and the figure for each other country is expressed as a percentage of the United States figures :)

Relative height of duty on various groups of commodities, by countries
[All of the percent figures are equivalent ad valorem rates]

1 Inclusion of United States excise taxes makes the rate 35.2 percent.

Relative height of duty on various groups of commodities by countries-Cont.

Source: American Tariff League study: How High Are United States Tariffs ?-1942.

Source: Compiled from official statistics of the U. S. Department of Commerce. Figures for 1934 from an arrangement of the basic data by the U. S. Department of State, making the agricultural and nonagricultural groups comparable with those of later years.

Source: Compiled from official statistics of the US. Department of Commerce. Figures for 1934 from an arrangement of the basic data by the U. S. Department of State, making the agricultural and nonagricultural groups comparable with those of later years.

Mr. REED. Mr. Secretary, I will try to be brief.

I noticed here in the report to Congress on lend-lease operations for the period ending December 11, 1942, article VII says:

In the final determination of the benefits to be provided to the United States of America by the Government of the United Kingdom for aid furnished under the act of Congress of March 11, 1941, the terms and conditions thereof shall be such as not to burden commerce between the two countries, but to promote

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