Word: tariffs
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Well aware that the U.S. trade plight may only strengthen the protectionist mood in Congress, 16 industrial countries* last week offered some extraordinary help. They volunteered to speed up a portion of their scheduled Kennedy Round tariff cuts while allowing the U.S. to delay its own cuts. This tariff advantage would give the U.S. trade balance a lift through 1969 estimated at $300 million...
Strong Backing. High-tariff advocates, concerned over competition from rising imports, have laid a score of quota proposals before Congress. They could affect $12 billion, or 75% of the nation's dutiable imports: not only textiles and dairy items but also apparel, steel, shoes, glass, oil, lead, zinc, pot ash, electronic products, ball and roller bearings, meat, honey, frozen strawberries, mink fur and watches. The three major bills have impressive senatorial backing: 29 co-sponsors for oil quotas, 36 for steel and 68 for textiles-in the third case enough to override a promised presidential veto. In the House...
...enacted, such bills would undermine last year's Kennedy Round of tariff cuts, an achievement that came after 34 years of U.S. effort to tear down the barriers to expanding trade and prosperity in the free world. Moreover, quotas would mean U.S. repudiation of the 1947 General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade, history's first major code of fair play for international commerce. Backers of liberalized trade compare today's proposed restrictions to the 1930 Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act, which by lifting import duties to record levels prompted reprisals abroad that helped to cut U.S. exports...
...Border taxes, however, if applied broadly, would require a major overhaul of the U.S. tax system. Under GATT rules, before such levies can be made on imports, indirect taxes must first be collected on domestically manufactured products, though they can be rebated on exports. Another alternative is a 5% tariff surcharge, but the U.S. cannot lawfully impose one under GATT rules without a most unlikely special dispensation from its trading partners...
...hope of forestalling border taxes and surcharges, West Germany has pressured the Common Market to speed up its own Kennedy Round tariff cuts without corresponding acceleration by the U.S. Such action would bolster the inflation-shrunk U.S. trade surplus by hundreds of millions of dollars over the next 31 years. So far, France has blocked agreement inside the EEC, but Common Market ministers will tackle the question again this week in Brussels. Hard-pressed Britain has announced that it is willing to grant full Kennedy Round cuts by next Jan. 1 instead of holding to the original five-year timetable...