611.3831/44
The Haitian Minister (Blanchet) to the Acting Secretary of State
Mr. Secretary of State: I am not bringing any new thing to Your Excellency’s attention when I point out that, without need of going [Page 309] farther back, from 1926–1927 to 1930–1931, the Republic of Haiti received from the United States 72.60 per cent of its total imports, while the United States, for the same period, absorbed only 8.21 per cent of Haitian exports. Your Excellency is familiar with the situation which these figures reveal.
I must add that, in 1931–1932, out of a total of 37,305,551 gourdes imports, Haiti purchased from the United States the amount of 25,12,282 gourdes, while, for the same year, the United States bought from Haiti only in the amount of 2,925,762 gourdes out of total exports 36,106,394 gourdes.
My Government thinks, and rightly, that certain Haitian products, sugar, alcohol, rum, fig-bananas, for example, might find an advantageous market in the United States, which is the more desirable because this flow of trade would permit us, as much as possible, as it developed, to equalize the direct balance of payments between our two countries. My Government, also, believes that the best means of assuring this happy result, would be to establish between the two countries a New Commercial Treaty which would favor and encourage, by way of reciprocity, the flow of imports from Haiti into the United States.
Accordingly, I have the honor to inform Your Excellency that I have been charged to begin, without any unnecessary delay, negotiations to these ends, if the Department of State deems such negotiations opportune, as does the Government of Haiti, and values as it does the efficaciousness of such a treaty and the reciprocal advantages which will result from it for Haitian-American trade.
Meanwhile, it gives me pleasure to avail myself [etc.]