Office of the Historian

611.4131/352

Memorandum by the Chief of the Division of Trade Agreements (Hawkins)

[Washington,] July 23, 1937.
Conversation: Mr. H. O. Chalkley, Commercial Counselor of the British Embassy;
Mr. John A. Stirling, British Board of Trade;
Mr. Harry C. Hawkins;
Mr. John D. Hickerson.

In response to the inquiry made by Messrs. Chalkley and Stirling on July 21, Mr. Chalkley was given by telephone the substance of the statement approved by the Secretary this morning. This statement was that after a satisfactory basis has been found for a trade agreement with the United Kingdom, we would be glad to enter into informal and confidential discussions with a view to finding a basis for a supplementary trade agreement with Canada; but it should be understood that such discussions would be confined to trade relations between the United States and Canada and would not deal in any way with the terms of our proposed trade agreement with the United [Page 63] Kingdom. Some time later, Mr. Chalkley and Mr. Stirling called with a view to making sure that they understood our position on this point.

Mr. Stirling particularly inquired regarding our statement that discussions entered into with the Canadians subsequent to our finding a basis for a trade agreement with the United Kingdom would be confined to trade relations between the United States and Canada and would not deal in any way with our trade-agreement negotiations with the United Kingdom. Mr. Stirling stated that this was very discouraging from their standpoint. He said that we apparently were taking a different position with respect to the Canadians than we were taking with regard to similar discussions with Australia and New Zealand. We informed Mr. Stirling that, while that condition may not have been explicitly laid down in the case of the Australians and New Zealanders, we thought it was implicit in the general position which we have taken that no specific compensation would be given to the Dominions in return for their relinquishing part of their preferences in the United Kingdom; that any concessions given by us to the Dominions in trade-agreements with them would be in return for concessions by the Dominions affecting the importation of American goods into the Dominion markets.