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John F. Kennedy on Free Trade |
The 1962 bill gave the President a 5-year authority to cut all tariffs by as much as 50% and to cut tariffs down to zero on those commodities traded predominantly by the US. He never avoided the fact that, in order to sell more, we would have to buy more; and he proposed a measure to provide Federal "adjustment assistance" to firms and workers injured by any increase in imports deemed desirable. "It is time we recognized," he said, that trade is "no longer a matter of local economic interest but of high national policy. This bill by enabling us to strike a bargain with the common Market, will 'strike a blow' for freedom."
The granting of export licenses to sell wheat to the Russians was not prohibited under any of the statutes limiting commercial transactions with the Communists. But Congress had added to the Agricultural Act of 1961 an amendment opposing the sale of subsidized agricultural commodities to unfriendly nations. Republican legislators were already invoking this provision as an obstacle to any sale.
Kennedy decided to ignore it, and offered ample reason. It was only a non-binding declaration of intent. It had been adopted at the height of the Berlin crisis in a wholly different climate. And the subsidy went not to the foreign buyer but to the American heat farmer, regardless of where and whether the wheat was sold.