THE WASHINGTON OPPORTUNITY
The British argument is, in its first stage, perfectly simple. Whatever else happens, American tariff barriers should be lowered as soon as possible. If this paeans that Congress must be tackled, farmers persuaded and Customs officials instructed to simplify their schedules and generally mend their ways, then the work to be done is surely plain enough, and the Administra- tion need not spend much more time walking round it and seeing new difficulties. It is not necessary to cherish any illusions on the subject. It had better be assumed from the start that the trouble with the doctrine of freer trade is simply that many ordinary Americans do not believe in it. But many ordinary Americans did not believe in the Marshall Plan and still do not believe in the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation. That did.not prevent President Truman and his advisers from doing what they thought was right, and it will be a grievous disappointment to many supporters of President Eisenhower, both in the United States and outside it, if he now, draws back from the hard path of enlightened economic policy. But if he does reassure Mr. Butler and Mr. Eden in this matter the road will at least be open for the solution of the more difficult problems of restoring convertibility between dollar and sterling, and deciding between the contrasted merits of a new special economic relationship between the United States, the United Kingdom and the Commonwealth, as advocated by the Com- mittee for Economic Development, and a tightening of the bonds between the United Kingdom and Continental Europe, as recently advocated by Mr. John Foster Dulles. The general public has not been told what the exact details of the British proposals for a move towards convertibility are, but it is per- fectly clear that they must be of some complexity and that it will be very difficult to square them with Britain's present obligations as a member of the European Payments Union. The argument which rages on these questions in the meantime is therefore of greater importance to professional economists, who are trying to get their ideas straightened out, than to practical politicians, who prefer to concentrate on the urgent task of getting the United States to lower its tariff. The most foolish argument of all is the one which says that the task is impossible and a waste of time. It is always unsafe to underestimate the capacity of the -American people for enlightened progress, particularly when it can be shown that progress and an expanding volume of output and trade are. one and the same. That is precisely what the big business who stand behind the C.E.D. report believe, and what the big business men who are the backbone of the Eisenhower Administration could be persuaded to believe. Indeed in some cases they are the same men. The going is good, and it is therefore a British duty and opportunity to urge President Eisenhower forward in the direction of freer trade, not to sympathise with him when he shows signs of holding back.
