GOVERNMENT: Freer Trade Winds

The Administration's drive for freer trade last week got another small, but helpful, shove forward. The United States Tariff Commission turned down a request by the Watch Attachment Manufacturers Association for higher import duties on foreign-made metal watch bracelets. The association argued that the "escape clause" of the Trade Agreements Extension Act should be invoked because increased imports of cheap foreign bracelets had seriously cut into the sales of U.S. producers. (Foreign bracelets made up 20% of sales last year v. 0.7% in 1947). The commission threw some statistics back at the U.S. bracelet makers. Total sales in 1952, said the commission, were a good $37.1 million, down about $1,700,000 from 1951, but only because distributors had snapped up large stocks in anticipation of a bracelet shortage which never materialized. Said the commission: "Notwithstanding an increase in imports . . . the domestic industry has been operating, on the whole, on a high and well-sustained level of production . . . Watch bracelets . . . are not being imported ... in such increased quantities ... as to cause or threaten serious injury . . ."