Speech #850062723

Let us examine the letter itself. The Department complains in it that the establishment and operation of import quotas "is inherently complex." Coming from the Department that generated the barbedwire entanglement known as GATT this seems a strange objection indeed. The fourth paragraph of the letter says that the import quota bill would require the classification "of all foreign industries exporting merchandise to the United States into seven categories based on the average wage payments made to the workers in those industries." To say this the writer must have failed to read the bill. The bill says that foreign industries "may be classified" in the manner specified. As a practical matter actual classification would be necessary only in individual cases. as when a foreign industry claimed that it was entitled to a larger quota because its. wages had increased sufficiently to qualify under the bill. To claim as the State Department did in its letter. that "the statistical and analytical problems raised by this requirement would appear to be formidable and may well be insuperable" is about as accurate as saying that our immigration laws require us to know his name and address of all people in the countries from which immigrants might come. It would be just about as sensible to keep a record of wages paid in the various industries in other countries for the purposes of the import quota bill as it would be to keep a card catalog of all persons in the world eligible to emigrate to the United States as a means of enforcing our immigration laws. Of course. what the State Department might better have done. rather than slugging blindly. would have been to say that no matter what kind of a bill was submitted to it. the Department would object to it and oppose it so long as it authorized the use of import quotas. The Departments mind is hermetically sealed against the entertainment of any kind of an import quota bill. It made up its mind 20 years ago. Its political philosophy froze solid at that time and neither commonsense nor experience will prevail against it.