WORLD TRADE: A Balky Start

Is the U.S. going to develop a world economic policy to support its political objectives? This question was crystallized last week by President Eisenhower's foreign-trade message to Congress. If the program he recommended goes through Congress, the U.S. will have made a belated start toward a foreign economic policy. If not, a major gap in U.S. foreign policy will become more conspicuous than ever.

The President's recommendations to Congress followed closely the report of Steelmaker Clarence Randall's Commission on Foreign Economic Policy (TIME, Feb. 1). Said the President: "This program consists of four major parts: aid, which we wish to curtail; investment, which we wish to encourage; convertibility, which we wish to facilitate; and trade, which we wish to expand." He asked Congress for legislation on these major specifics:

¶ I Extend the Reciprocal Trade Agreements Act for three years, with new presidential authority to negotiate tariff cuts up to 5% a year and to make other tariff adjustments.

¶ Reduce by 14% the corporate income tax on the foreign operations of U.S. firms.

¶ Allow foreign firms to compete for U.S. Government business.

On Capitol Hill, congressional leaders expected Chairman Daniel Reed of the House Ways & Means Committee, a dissenter on the Randall Commission Report, to bury freer trade legislation with either silence or a mass of endless testimony at public hearings.

Speaker Joseph W. Martin hoped to postpone the issue until next year. He was in no mood to repeat last year's performance on the excess-profits tax, when he had to wrest working control of the Ways & Means Committee away from Dan Reed. This year old Dan has gone along with the Administration's social-security expansion program. Martin does not want to repay Reed by opening an all-out fight against him on tariffs.

So the program will be lost unless President Eisenhower goes to the people with a ringing explanation of the importance of freer trade to U.S. foreign policy.