United States foreign trade in merchandise, by economic classes: 1926-40

[Values in millions of dollars. latter and succeeding years are

Import data are "general imports" through 1933 except 1933 in italics; the "imports for consumption." Data cover years ending June 30 for 1910-14; all other years are calendar years]

Mr. REED. Now, the gentleman from Virginia [Mr. Robertson] went on to emphasize how these foreign-trade agreements create friendly relations between nations. Well, if that is true, we certainly ought to have very friendly relations right along with Germany; because, from 1936 to 1939, inclusive, we shipped to Germany 342,000 tons of iron and steel scrap, and we sent them copper which, of course, we are very short of now, in the amount of 331,582,831 pounds of refined copper, or 115,791 tons. Now, that ought to have made Germany very friendly toward us. Then we sent scrap copper over there, between 1936 and 1939, in the amount of 72,391,293 pounds, or 36,146 tons. Still, that did not soften them up.

Then we sent petroleum over there, and that, of course, is something they have been worrying about and fighting Russia to try to get. We sent them, during that period of 1936 to 1939, $76,984,367 worth of that.

Then they needed cotton very badly for purposes of making war and we sent them 2,376,883 bales of cotton, valued at $138,621,360. Now, that did not seem to create very friendly relations between Germany and this country.

You see, I am testifying now, the same as the gentleman from Virginia [Mr. Robertson] did, and 1 am not committing you. [Laughter.]

Secretary JONES. I am not arguing with you, either.

Mr. REED. No; I bet you are not. [Laughter.]

Then take Japan: We were very friendly with her and sent her iron and steel scrap, between 1936 and 1940, inclusive, amounting to 7,246,721 tons, valued at $120,814,100. Those are figures furnished by your Department.

Secretary JONES. Yes.

Mr. REED. Then we sent her steel ingots, blooms, and so forth, which she used for war purposes, from 1936 to 1940, inclusive, amounting to 740,752 tons, valued at $26,825,000. And I notice in a recent issue of the Saturday Evening Post you will find our fellows on Wake Island and our fellows fighting in the fox holes have been getting some of that back; they have been able to identify that.

Secretary JONES. That is right.

Mr. REED. Then, to be sure to keep Japan on very friendly terms, from 1936 to 1940, we sent them 916,594,803 pounds, or 4,582,472 tons, of refined copper, valued at $99,291,000, while they were getting ready to strike us at Pearl Harbor. They thought they did not have the material to build up a navy, and air force, and a tank force to take care of us as they proposed, and to do all they intended to do to us. And so we sent them scrap copper from 1936 to 1940, 36,695,740 pounds, or 18,347.5 tons, valued at $3,695,000-and children are now bringing pennies to school to help out our own Government.

And here is the most astounding thing of all-tin. We do not produce tin; but between 1936 and 1940 we sent Japan 184,854,015 pounds, or 92,427 tons, of tin, and tin is right next door there, and they might have gotten it from Great Britain. And then we sent them tin-plate scrap, 55,251 tons. And petroleum sent to Japan from 1936 to 1940 was valued at $219,856,062.

And, of course, we took care of them with cotton. We sent them 4,674,782 bales of cotton, valued at $276,239,000 plus.

And aircraft and parts, which our boys have been getting in the neck since from 1936 to 1940, we sent them $18,774,000 worth of aircraft supplies.

And we sent them machine tools, of which we are desperately short-we exported to them $37,000,000 worth at a time when we needed every one of those machine tools.

Now, I only mention that because this talk about creating friendly relations is just plain bunk, because there is not much to it. We have always had foreign commerce, have we not, through all of the years we have been doing business with other nations?

Secretary JONES. I feel those shipments would have been made without regard-if there had been no trade agreements. I do not think trade agreements influenced that at all.

Mr. REED. I do not, either; I do not think they had a thing to do with it. But the point is that commerce does not necessarily create friendly relations." With Germany and Japan it did not, and the same would hold true of Italy.

Secretary JONES. It does not necessarily with a warlike people, but I do think trading with people, commerce, does create friendships.

Mr. REED. Outside of China, with nations abroad, generally speaking-outside of Switzerland, Norway, and some of those countrieshave not been warlike for 2,000 years?

Secretary JONES. That is true; but we all hope "this one will be the last one."

Mr. REED. That has been true for 2,000 years, too.

Secretary JONES. We have been trusting right along, covering the things you have been talking about, that by shipping those things we would cultivate friendships, and we hope we will create friendships.

Mr. REED. But we did not create friendly relations with those countries?

Secretary JONES. No.

Mr. REED. And you take Germany and England; Germany was one of her best customers.

Secretary JONES. Yes.

Mr. REED. And France and Germany, especially; but it did not stop them going to war.

Now, what I want to do is to get down to the realities of the solution here and try to weigh all factors. Of course the testimony we have had here is what we have every time we mention anything that has occurred under the tariff system, which was the thing that started the industrial development of this country at the beginning, and we have had tariffs, low tariffs and high tariffs, down through all of the years since the beginning of our Government, and we have built up our industry on tariffs. You would not say there is no industry in this country that does not need some protection from foreign countries, would you?

Secretary JONES. I do not know whether there is any.

Mr. REED. You would not want free trade, would you?
Secretary JONES. No; I would not want free trade.

Mr. REED. And none of your party platforms have advocated strictly free trade, have they?

Secretary JONES. Not that I know of.

Mr. REED. You know the thing that strikes me, and I want to be perfectly fair, is every time you ask a question they talk about the old order as if the Constitution and everything else really ought to be changed; that we are going into a great global concept of some kind, in which everybody is going to be happy and friendly. I still am old-fashioned; I believe in our Constitution. Some of your new countries have adopted the new order. Russia has a new order; she is doing away with the Ten Commandments, with the Bible, and churches, and all old-fashioned things. She is doing away with them; but we disagree with her. Now, just how far we are going to go in this new order I do not know. I do not propose, for one, to be silenced by the very same program Hitler used over there. There is a startling and striking similarity between the statements made here by those in support of a new social and economic order and the statements made by Hitler when he was hurling defiance at those who were opposed to his proposed new social and economic order. There was this slight difference in fixing the blame: Hitler charged the unemployment plight of Germany to the Jews; but here every social and economic ill is charged to the Republicans. Hitler silenced all arguments, every attempted defense of the old constitutional order of the

German Republic, by shouting "Jews." Here those who wish to destroy our tariff system and open our market to the world meet every argument by shouting "Republicans." So it is just a question of where you are." It is the Jews in one country and the Republicans in the other. I do not believe you take this position, but that has been done in this committee.

Now, with those few observations, Mr. Secretary, I thank you for listening to me.

Secretary JONES. Thank you. [Laughter.]

The CHAIRMAN. Mr. Secretary, the gentleman from New York Mr. Reed] has mentioned the fact that in pre-war years we had shipped out our scrap, copper, and tin, and he gave the millions of pounds and tons shipped to Germany and Japan, and said "Still, that did not cause us to retain friendly relations with those countries." I am not questioning the accuracy of his figures, but on that same hypothesis, or basis, it might be argued with equal logic that the 25 other nations that we have reciprocal trade agreements with are not at war with us and they are not outlaw nations. But it is not to be expected that any relations we might have with outlaw nations such as Germany and Japan, ruled by heartless and ruthless dictators-it is not to be expected that anything we could do would keep them from making war; but with 25 other nations, with which we have negotiated trade agreements, we are not at war. So it might be argued with the same logic and reason that those trade agreements had something to do with keeping us out of war with those 25 nations with which we now do have friendly relations. I do not claim it is; I do not know; but certainly we have friendly relations with 25 out of the 27; so certainly we have not been injured, even if we have not been helped.

Secretary JONES. I would not think trade agreements affected in any way our trade with Japan and Germany, or Italy. They wanted things that we had; they bought them. We were glad to sell them. They were preparing for war and we were not; we were trusting and we did not think the war would ever come to us. We never think so until it is too late. But I do not think the trade agreements had anything to do with that.

The CHAIRMAN. One way or the other? Secretary JONES. One way or the other. And I think the only reason, I assume the only reason, we had trade relations with those two countries is that we wanted to be friendly. We would still like to be friendly if we could. But we want to disarm them before we become friends.

Mr. REED. Mr. Chairman, may I make a unanimous-consent request? I just want to state the article in the Saturday Evening Post of April 10, 1943, is an article by Lt. Col. Walter L. J. Bayler. Just taking the part relating to scrap that is thrown back at our boys, which I have marked with red pencil, on page 29 of the Saturday Evening Post, I would like that to go in the record. It is from a man who was there and knows how we are getting it back.

The CHAIRMAN. Without objection, it will be put in the record. (The matter above referred to is as follows:)

Our marines found a lot to interest them in the bits of shrapnel they were gathering up from our bombed area. Some of them were recognizable fragments of American manufacture, such as scissors from a well-known make of

sewing machine or fragments of farm machinery. One of the boys had two radiator caps of a style once familiar. They were not pleased, these men, and they gave their opinion, in pungent phrases, of a policy that included selling scrap to a probable future enemy.

Mr. ROBERTSON. Mr. Chairman, in view of the fact I have to go down in just a few minutes to this Jefferson celebration, will you permit me to make just one comment on the turkey issue? Mr. Reed mentioned me. [Laughter.]

Mr. DISNEY. When Mr. Reed and Mr. Robertson get through, I want to ask one question, Mr. Secretary.

Mr. ROBERTSON. My distinguished friend from New York [Mr. Reed] brought up a matter that absolutely proves the contention I have always made, that Mr. Hull could be relied upon when he said, "We are not going to negotiate any treaty that will be injurious to our farm interests, or our industrial interests." And when he had up the matter of a treaty with Argentine and they proposed to bring in Argentine turkeys, I went before the reciprocity committee and showed them that they could lay down a dressed Argentine turkey on the Atlantic seaboard for 10 cents a pound-a turkey that had been grown on the pampas of Argentine with practically free food and cheap labor; whereas a splendid Virginia gobbler, in his beard and tail feathers, costs the Virginia farmer 16 cents a pound. And Mr. Hull did not negotiate an agreement that was injurious to the American producer of turkeys.

And you could not ask for a better illustration of the fact that Mr. Hull has absolutely carried out his agreement to be fair to all of our American interests in the negotiation of these agreements.

Mr. REED. Mr. Chairman, just one word. I thank Mr. Robertson for proving our case, absolutely, so far as the farmers are concerned. There is no question about that. He knows that it is true all over the world, that they can land their cheap products here and utterly ruin us, and I congratulate the gentleman from Virginia for making his fight and being successful, and now he ought to be fair enough to give the rest of us a chance to live in this country.

The CHAIRMAN. The Chair rules that the fight is a draw! [Laughter.]

Mr. Disney?

Mr. DISNEY. Mr. Jones, we come from cattle States, and you and I are interested rather identically in that regard. I am getting inquiries from my cattlemen about the reciprocal trade agreement extension. I presume you have been contacted on the subject, probably, or will be. What is your thought about this Argentine cattle problem that agitates our western cattle growers in connection with these treaties? What is your observation?

Secretary JONES. I do not believe I have any to make. I have never really given thought to it. I have observed and listened to one side and the other, but it has never been my responsibility to make a decision, therefore I haven't done so.

Mr. DISNEY. Did we ever have a trade agreement with Japan or Germany, or do you know?

Secretary JONES. Not to my knowledge.

Mr. REED. NO; we never have.