Evening star., 1940-01-12
Mr.. HuI's Statement

Opening his defense of the recip-
rocal trade agreements program be-
fore the House Ways and Means
Committee yesterday, Secretary of
State Hull confined himself to a
straightforward, factual statement
of what tariff lowering agreements
have done toward building up our
foreign trade in the past and conf
dent but conservative forecast as to
what may be expected in the future.
In urging that Congress renew the
legislation authorizing the negoti-
alton of the agreements, which ex-
pires June IL, Mr. Hull effectively
attacked the principal argument
which has been made against his
program-that it has proved injuri-
GUS to the American farmer.
He dealt first with the general &c
ture, showing that there was an in
crease of 46 per cent, or one billion
dollars, in our export trade in 1887
and 1888, when the influence of the
trade agreements became important,
as compared to our exports in 1884
and 1885. Taking up the specific
case of the dairy industry, the al
legged injury to which has been the
subject of the most vociferous COM
plants, Mr.. Hull made most con-
vincing showing. He pointed out
that this industry already supplies
over SO per cent of the domestic
market. Under a system of COM
plete embargo on foreign dairy prod
ucts, he said, the dairy industry
would have 100 per cent of the home
market, but that market would be
greatly reduced as result of the
lowered capacity of foreign pur-
chasers to buy our export goods and
the consequential impairment of the
domestic purchasing power of our
own exporters and their employees.
The same thing is true, he added, of
the American cattle industry, which
now supplies from 95 to SO per cent
of the home market.
Most of Mr. Hulls statement was
devoted to an exposition of the bene-
fits to America which have resulted
from the trade agreements and a
discussion of the care which is exer-
cised in negotiating them to avoid
undue injury to any domestic in
terest, but he was equally convincing
in his analysis of their world wide
influence. In The Stars opinion,
there can be no valid dissent from Mr..
Hull's dual proposition: That our
Nation, and every nation, can enjoy
sustained prosperity only in world
that is at peace, and that a peaceful
world is possible only when there
exists for it solid economic founda-
ton, an indispensable part of which
is active and mutually beneficial
trade among the nations.
The evidence is becoming increas-
ingly clear that no tenable argument
can be made against the trade agree
ments. So far as the opposition case
Is coilcellleu, IL was summed up,
with surprising candor, by a member
of the House committee who, in
acknowledging a difference of view
point between himself and the Sec
retary, said that Mr., Hull takes the
broad view that the whole country
is helped" while the members of
Congress must think of "the interests
of the people we represent"
That devotion to narrow sectional
interests. understandable though it
is, has been the bane of our tariff
policy in the past, and is the best
argument that can be made for con-
tinuing the present limited tariff
adjustment powers of the Secretary
of State and the President whose
viewpoint in the very nature of
things is national rather than sec