780             FOREIGN RELATIONS, 19 5 0, VOLUME ]

411.0031/11-2050
   Memorandum      by the Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for
        Economic Affairs (O'Gara) to the Secretary of State

SECRET                             [WASHINGTON,] November 13, 1950.
Subject: Legislative Program for the Trade Agreements Act and
     the ITO

Problem
  To determine the position of the Administration in the 82nd Con-
gress on the Reciprocal Trade Agreements Act1 and the ITO.2
Considerations
  1. Unless renewed, the Trade Agreements Act will expire on
June 30, 1951. The ITO has languished for two years before the
Congress without effective action.3
  2. An effective trade program must be kept going. There will be
strong opposition to this and a. real possibility of defeat.4 We cannot
overcome this opposition and avoid defeat unless we make it clear
that the trade program is an essential, indispensable part of our total
foreign policy.

  1The authority under which the United States Executive entered in-to the
General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) (concluded at Geneva,
October 30, 1947) and continued after 1947 to negotiate multilaterally within
the GATT framework, was the Tariff Act of 1930 (46 Stat. 560), as amended
by
the Act of June 12, 1934, as amended (48 Stat. 943, 57 Stat. 125, 59 Stat.
410, 63
Stat. 697). The basic amendment was in the Act of 1934, known popularly as
the Reciprocal Trade Agreements Act. In the 1934 act, inter alia, Congress
delegated its authority to the President to negotiate trade agreements, and
subsequent acts were substantially simply "extension acts," in
prolongation of
the presidential authority. At this time, the Act of September 26, 1949 constituted
-the most recent trade agreements legislation; it provided for a two-year
ex-
tension of presidential authority rather than the normal (except for the
1948
act) three-year extension (63 Stat. 697).
  1 For documentation on the formulation of the Charter for the International
Trade Organization (ITO) at the United Nations Conference on Trade and
Employment which met at Habana, Cuba, November 17, 1947-March 24, 1948,
see Foreign Relations, 1948, vol. i, Part 2, pp. 802 ff. For texts of the
ITO Charter,
see United Nations Doe. ICITO/1/4 (a document of the Interim Commission of
the International Trade Organization set up by the Final Act of the Habana
Conference) or Department of State Publication 3117 (Commercial Policy Series
113), Havana Charter for an International Trade Organization and Related
Documents (Washington, Government Printing Office, 1948).
   ' The Administration never submitted the Habana Charter to Congress in
1948
 for a variety of reasons (including higher priority for other legislation
such as
 the European Recovery Program). The Executive sent the ITO Charter to the
 Congress on April 28, 1949, together with a presidential message asking
for
 approval in a joint resolution, and an explanatory memorandum from the Secre-
 tary of State (81st Congress, 1st Session, Senate Document No. 61).
 "There is scattered documentation in file series 394.31 and 394 ITO
for earlier
 in the year 1950 indicating increasing Administration concern at growing
opposi-
 tion to the trade agreements program both in and out of Congress.