for original authority but for confirmation of the authority that had already been voted by our Congress and approved and signed by our President. Why review these details at this time?

The purpose is to call attention to the policy of our Department of State to enter into far-reaching executive agreements with other countries without clear authorization from Congress; and to bring to light how our freedom of action as a nation is being compromised in this twilight zone by the State Department. This trend is further illustrated by another action taken by GATT at Geneva at its last meeting.

The United States Tariff Commission late in 1950 recommended to the President restoration of the duty on women's fur-felt hats because of the injury with which the great increase in imports threatened our own millinery industry. The duty had been reduced in a trade agreement negotiated by the State Department with Czechoslovakia in 1947 and proclaimed by the President in 1948 after Czechoslovakia had gone behind the Iron Curtain. The Tariff Commission held public hearings in January 1950 in accordance with the escape clause of the trade agreement and made a field investigation to determine the merits of the allegations of injury or threatened injury made by the fur-felt hat industry, supported by the A. F. of L. Union in the industry. In October the Commission recommended to the President the restoration of the duty to its previous level on those categories of women's fur-felt hats that felt the brunt of the import competition.

The President accepted the Tariff Commission's recommendation and gave notice of the restoration of the duty from December 1, 1950. This fact was reported by the State Department to the contracting parties of GATT, as required by the provisions of the general agreement. At the next meeting of GATT the action of the United States was placed on its agenda for approval or rejection. Czechoslovakia, as one of the contracting parties of GATT and the country with which the tariff cut was negotiated, protested, and challenged the restoration of the duty in question by the United States. The contracting parties thereupon appointed a "working party" to review the case and to report at the meeting which was to be held September 22, 1951. This was the same meeting that considered our withdrawal of the entire Czechoslovakian trade agreement.

The working party made a detailed report to the contracting parties, consisting of 18 pages of closely printed words and statistics. The report reviewed all aspects of the United States Tariff Commission's findings and the President's action in the light of article XIX of the general agreement which sets forth the circumstances and procedures under which concessions may be withdrawn and tariff duties restored to their previous levels. The report also set forth the contentions of the United States representatives in support of our action as well as those made by the spokesmen for Czechoslovakia in rebuttal. After pondering elaborately the allegations and counterrepresentations of the contestants, the working party cast its lot on the side of the United States, with some reservations and suggestions.

The action of the working party was adopted by GATT and the United States was sustained. The suggestion was made, however, that it would be desirable for the United States Government to follow the trends of imports, production, and consumption with the idea of restoring the concession, that is, restoring the tariff cut, as soon as it became clear that the higher duty was no longer justified.

Now, what is wrong with all this?

The question is how it has come about that action of the United States Congress and action of the President in carrying out powers delegated to him by Congress are now subject to review by an international body, namely, the contracting parties of GATT, when such authority of review was never conferred upon it by Congress.

GATT has reviewed, as previously detailed, two sovereign acts of the United States. One was the abrogation of our trade agreement with Czechoslovakia as required by an act of Congress, signed by the President: the other was an action proclaimed by the President after recommendation to him by the United Tariff Commission in pursuance of an Executive order.

To be sure, GATT supported the United States in both instances; but this need not have been the case. We might have been overruled. In any future case brought before GATT, not only by us but by other members, our position might not be sustained and the action of our Congress could be nullified, as well as that of our Tariff Commission. Yet not even our Supreme Court has the

power to set aside an action of the Tariff Commission unless the powers under which the Commission might be acting at any given time were held to be unconstitutional.

GATT did not come into being in pursuance of a treaty ratified by the Senate or as the result of a Senate resolution of adherence such as determined our acceptance of the compulsory jurisdiction of the International Court of Justice, adopted August 2, 1946. Nor did our participation in GATT arise from an act of participation passed by both Houses of Congress, as did our joining of the United Nations, which was authorized by the United Nations Participation Act, approved December 20, 1945. GATT came into being behind the interference which was run for it by the Charter for an International Trade Organization. The latter was virtually identical to GATT in many respects but more farreaching. The Charter of the International Trade Organization was indeed submitted to Congress for ratification, as it should have been. But it lingered there in semioblivion until it was withdrawn by the State Department.

That left GATT, which did not have the necessary congressional endorsement, and which was to be absorbed into the International Trade Organization once the latter was properly launched, without the benefit of congressional legitimacy, and it has been in that state ever since, a species of maverick in the field of international tariff relations. It could not be absorbed by the International Trade Organization because the latter never received congressional ratification. Nevertheless, GATT now proceeds as if it, itself, had received congressional approval, which it has not; and this tariff maverick assumes the authority to review, that is, to study with the purpose of approving or rejecting, actions of the United States Government which carry out laws of Congress or administrative decisions of duly constituted Federal agencies.

In bypassing the Constitution and vesting an international agency with powers to overrule sovereign acts of this country, the State Department courted the embarrassments that now afflict her in the tariff field. The United States should withdraw from GATT completely, rather than to permit this monument to irregular procedure and irresponsibility to carry us into yet greater embarrassments. Such withdrawal would not nullify or set aside the trade agreements program. It would be a step in the direction of legitimacy which, in this field, is overdue.

[Congressional Record, March 28, 1952]

GENERAL AGREEMENT ON TARIFFS AND TRADE

Extension of remarks of Hon. Robert T. Secrest, of Ohio, in the House of Representatives, Friday, March 28, 1952

Mr. SECREST. Mr. Speaker, under leave to extend my remarks in the Record, I include the following letter from O. R. Strackbein, chairman of the National Labor-Management Council on Foreign Trade, Washington, D. C.:

The Honorable ROBERT T. SECREST,

THE NATIONAL LABOR-MANAGEMENT

COUNCIL ON FOREIGN TRADE POLICY,
Washington, D. C., March 19, 1952.

House Office Building, Washington, D. C.

DEAR MR. SECREST: I have your letter of March 5, 1952, in which you enclosed a reply from the State Department to a letter from you requesting their view on my broadcast entitled "Tariff Maverick" which was devoted to a discussion of the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade.

I am happy to have this opportunity to answer the State Department's comrents. These were embodied in their reply to you, signed by Assistant Secretary Jack K. McFall.

At the outset they say:

"Mr. Strackbein's main suggestion is that the United States should withdraw from the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade. His arguments for this Course are two, first, that the agreement was entered into without clear legal authority; and, second, that the agreement subjects the United States governLental action to review by foreign governments."

Mr. McFall then undertakes to answer these charges by a brief review of the legislative history of the trade agreements program. In seeking to establish 30572-53-45

the President's authority to enter into an agreement such as the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) entered into in 1947 at Geneva, the State Department relies only in part on the authorization contained in the Trade Agreements Act of 1934 which was in the form of an amendment to the Tariff Act of 1930.

Under this original Trade Agreements Act of 1934 (which consists of sec. 350 added to the Tariff Act of 1930, in the form of an amendment) the President was authorized "to enter into foreign trade agreements with foreign governments or instrumentalities thereof" and to proclaim such modifications of duties and other import restrictions required to carry out any trade agreement entered into by him. Specifically, duty changes were limited to 50 percent, up or down; and the President could not place any duitable item on the free list or put a duty on any item that did not already carry a duty. Finally, the President could suspend any such modifications (concessions) with respect to any country that discriminated against our commerce "or because of other acts of policies which in his opinion tend to defeat" the purposes of the act.

This was a simple authorization to the President to make foreign trade agreements under which he might reduce or increase our tariff rates by 50 percent, add or continue in effect certain other import restrictions and take retaliatory action against countries that discriminate against our commerce.

Section 350 (i. e., the Trade Agreements Act of 1934) was a little over 2 pages in length and simple in its aims. Under it the United States negotiated agreements with nearly 30 separate countries before 1947. There were all individual bilateral trade agreements. Then, after 13 years of such bilateral dealing, the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade was negotiated at Geneva, Switzerland, in 1947. This included a little over 20 countries, all bound together in one general agreement. This agreement, known from its initials as GATT, contained 35 articles and is 65 pages in length. It is to this agreement, which goes far afield from the original Trade Agreements Act of 1934 (section 350 of the Tariff Act of 1930) that my radio address referred, and not to the previous bilateral agreements. This fact was made clear enough and need not have been confused, as it was, by the State Department, as we shall see later.

Now, the State Department, as said above, relies only partly on the Trade Agreements Act as justification for the exercise of the presidential power to enter into an agreement such as GATT. Mr. McFall says in his letter:

"In part, also, the President's authority to enter into the general agreement rests upon his constitutional responsibility for the conduct of our foreign relations."

Later he says, "Constitutional objections to the trade-agreements program by those who are not in sympathy with its objectives are not new." He then quote: the Ways and Means Committee, from its report in 1945, as saying in part:

"We consider that it is clear, on the basis of precedent and authority, that (1 no constitutional or other legal considerations require Senate ratification trade agreements and (2) the Trade Agreements Act involves no improper dele gation of legislative power."

Please note, Mr. Secrest, that the Ways and Means Committee was referrin to the Trade Agreements Act and not to the General Agreement on Tariffs an Trade. The report quoted from was made in 1945. The general agreement w negotiated in 1947. My objections were to GATT and not to the previous bila eral agreements. The quotation from the Ways and Means Committee w: therefore beside the point. GATT is something quite different from a me agreement in which duty reductions are made. It has in it the makings of super state exercising great powers over our trade and related economic matter I said nothing about the constitutionality of the Trade Agreements Act, as mig be inferred from Mr. McFall's defense; but referred to GATT, to which t quotation from the Ways and Means Committee does not apply.

Only now do we come to the State Department's real answer to my objectio to GATT. After saying that my other objection to GATT is that it involv review by other countries of congressional and Executive action. Mr. McF: says that in order to appraise this argument it is necessary to consider h the general agreement (GATT) operates.

He says, "It must be emphasized that the parties to the agreement canı overrule acts of Congress or of the Executive." This was not precisely wha had alleged in the radio address, but comes to about the same thing. How does the State Department explain away this charge?

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Answering my own question, I said that she went to Geneva not for original authority but for confirmation of the authority that had already been voted by our Congress. That this procedure was recognized by the State Department follows from the fact that before acting they did lay the proposal before GATT. Mr. McFall says:

"In the other instance of 'review' cited by Mr. Strackbein, the United States itself requested the contracting parties to terminate United States obligations to Czechoslovakia. Congress had provided in the Trade Agreements Extension Act of 1951 that the United States terminate 'as soon as practicable' concessions to Soviet-dominated countries."

In other words, by the State Department's own admission, the United States was in a position, because of our adherence to GATT, of having to request the contracting parties to sever our obligations to Czechoslovakia. Our Congress had spoken. It had required the President to suspend or withdraw the pact. The President had signed the act of Congress; but before carrying out this law, the State Department found it necessary to go to Geneva and ask in effect "May we please do what Congress has instructed us to do?"

Was this merely consultation?

GATT voted on the question. It sustained the United States a second time.

If we were willing to abide by these decisions when they favored us, what will it make of us if we refuse when they go against us?

The State Department's letter lets us know what they themselves say. Figuratively, the cat has tired of playing and is now ready to dispose of the mouse. Says Mr. McFall:

"Respect for international undertakings in the case of Czechoslovakia, as in the case of termination of our bilateral commercial agreement with the U. S. S. R.. required that certain procedures be observed in accomplishing the termination." The teeth are beginning to show, but it is necessary to look closely. "Certain procedures" must "be observed," Mr. McFall says. These procedures, however, include the right of the other member nations of GATT to vote us down, to deny our petitions, or to sustain those who complain against us. Remember, Mr. SECREST, that while "It must be emphasized that the parties to the agreement cannot overrule acts of Congress or of the Executive," the contracting parties to the agreement "do have the right to consult." This right of consultation includes these certain procedures that contain the quite effective power of review. What would have been our position had we not consulted in the two cases mentioned and had we not followed the decisions of GATT? The State Department has rather definite ideas on this. In his letter, Mr. McFall says:

"To have ignored these undertakings (read ‘obligations') would have given the Soviet bloc a strong propaganda theme against the United States."

Again, further on, in assessing the possible effect of a withdrawal by the United States from GATT, he says:

"The blow our allies would not be economic alone. In other countries the inconsistency of our giving with one hand, through the Mutual Defense Assistance Program and through point 4, while taking away with the other would raise fundamental doubts regarding the bases of our leadership in the free world. These developments would affect both the ability and the willingness of our allies to make the sacrifices and readjustments that we are urging upon them." There you have the sanctions of GATT.

It is precisely because we should honor our agreements that membership in GATT is a very serious matter. It is precisely because we should carry out our obligations and not flout them that GATT represents something far beyond the right to consult. Either we enter our international agreements in good faith, with full intention to meet our commitments, or we play fast and loose in our international relations. Which position does the State Department occupy? When they say that we are not bound by GATT, that we can withdraw, what sort of picture do they mean to draw of Uncle Sam in his conduct of international affairs? Do they wish us to stand by GATT when GATT supports us but to walk out if GATT goes against us?

If not, then GATT exercises a power of review as tight as any. Yes; we can walk out. Certainly we can behave execrably; we can be international heels. Is that the signifinance of the State Department's argument?

If not, then we are, indeed, bound by GATT. This was what I assumed in the radio address because I assumed that Uncle Sam honors his agreements. I still assume it. I assume that when we give our word in an international agreement we mean to carry it out in good faith and to abide by the rules and procedures and by the decisions arrived at in accordance with those procedures,