Word: tariffers
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Last week the President made another exception, granted tariff increases up to 50% on Swiss watches. The new rates apply to nonjeweled watches and watches containing not more than 17 jewels, and increase the duty from 9? to $1.15 per movement.* Supporting his decision, the President noted that imports of Swiss movements, up 4,000,000 units last year over the 1946-50 annual average of 8,300,000, are doing "serious injury" to American makers, whose production costs are nearly twice as high, and who are being outsold in the U.S. nearly 4 to 1. The President cited...
...President insisted the decision did not mean he had abandoned his goal of lower international tariff barriers. But his action, coming after this year's abandonment by the White House of the freer-trade program in the Randall Commission report, was sure to be taken as a further signal that the U.S. Government has no serious intention of pushing for freer trade...
Slumping Production. In the Capitol corridors, lobbyists for the watchmakers also pressured Congressmen to urge the President to uphold the Tariff Commission. Two years ago, the Tariff Commission had recommended a similar increase, but President Truman turned it down on the ground that the U.S. watch industry was in no real danger from Swiss competition. But now domestic jewel-watch production is off (an estimated 1,600,000 units this year, or half 1951 production), and employment has slumped from 12,000 in 1945 to some 8,000. Says Hamilton's President Arthur Sinkler: "The decline in domestic watch...
Trade v. Aid. Others came to the aid of the Swiss. The C.I.O. appealed to Eisenhower to reject the Tariff Commission's recommendation, pointing out that the importation of Swiss movements created "substantial subsidiary employment" in the U.S. (about 15,000 workers make cases and straps, assemble watches, etc.). The American Farm Bureau Federation also asked Eisenhower to reject the tariff increase because Switzerland buys $11 per capita in U.S. farm products...
Eisenhower, who has until July 27 to make a decision, last week gave a clue to his intentions. He overruled a Tariff Commission recommendation that he raise the tariff and set quotas on groundfish fillets (cod, flounder, etc.), now being used in the fast-growing new product, fish sticks (TIME, May 17). Said Eisenhower: higher tariffs and quotas "would hamper and limit the development of the market." But if Ike overrules the commission on watches, the Administration may decide to give the watchmakers more defense orders to make up for their lost watch business...