611.5131/660b: Telegram
The Secretary of State to the Chargé in France (Whitehouse)
346. Department’s 345. Text of “Memorandum on the So-Called Countervailing Duties” is as follows:
“The Government of the United States would be glad to restore the rates affected by the so-called countervailing duties to precisely instead of approximately the figures obtaining before October 6, 1927, were there authority to do so under existing law. The American Government, however, is certain that the action which it can take will be satisfactory to the French Government, since it is estimated on the basis of the trade in 1926 that the duties to be paid on imports of French goods will be only about $7,000 greater annually than the duties that would be paid in case the status quo ante of the American tariff could be completely restored.
Paragraphs 369, 371, 1302, 1536, 1541 and 1543 of the United States Tariff Act of 1922 provide that duties shall be assessed at the rates applied by foreign governments to the articles in question of American origin in cases where the foreign rates exceed specified rates, if any, prescribed by the American law. These provisions are automatic and mandatory, and customs officials of the United States are not vested with discretion in the matter.
In the light of the information at hand as to the rates which the French Government is prepared to accord to American commerce, it appears that when such rates have been made effective the rates of the American tariff would be reduced to the level obtaining before October 6 on goods classified under the previously enumerated paragraphs of that tariff and covered under the following items of the French tariff:
- (Ex. 614 bis 2) as to straight bars of iron or steel for velocipede rims; velocipede wheel rims without rubber tire; velocipede saddles, tool bags, and bells with mounts.
- (462) Paper-board, pulp board, cardboard, etc., including all card weighing over 350 grams per square meter, rough or prepared.
- (462 bis) Milled board, (called papier maché) stone board in ornaments for decoration.
- (463) Cut or shaped board.
The American rates would be reduced to the level of the new rates of the French tariff which would be applied to American products in the case of the following:
- (614 bis 1) Bicycles, tricycles, motorcycles and motor cyclettes, including children’s velocipedes.
- (Ex. 614 bis 2) As to engines and detachable parts, for motorcycles; velocipede wheel rims with rubber tires; velocipede lamps and detachable parts; articulated chains for velocipedes; other accessories and detachable parts for velocipedes.
- (463 bis) Vulcanized fiber and similar products.
- (181 and 181 bis) Brick, solid, common and fine, pressed, or smoothed; hollow bricks.
- (185) Cement, slow and quick.
Neither the French nor in consequence the American rates would be changed on the following:
- (Ex. 614 ter) Automobile head lights and lamps (mineral oil, acetylene, or electric) complete or not, of iron, steel, copper, copper alloy, aluminum or other light metal, partially or entirely nickeled or not.
- (0381) Calcium acetate.
The subject has no appreciable practical importance, inasmuch as many of the above articles are not imported from France in appreciable quantities, and the total imports from France of all articles affected by these schedules amounted to only a little over $100,000 in 1926.”