Office of the Historian

393.115 Standard-Vacuum Oil Co./98: Telegram

The Acting Secretary of State to the Ambassador in Japan (Grew)

Washington, March 18, 1939—1 p.m.

65. Reference Peiping’s 131, March 14, 4 p.m.22 (copy of which has been mailed to you) in regard to taxation of products of the [Page 302] Standard-Vacuum Oil Company at Kaifeng. You are authorized in your discretion to make an approach to the Japanese Government in regard to the matter in such way as you think most likely to prove effective. If you make an approach it is suggested that, in addition to pointing out the absence of any treaty basis or legal warrant for taxing the products of the American company, you stress the flagrantly discriminatory manner in which the tax is apparently being levied.25

Repeated to Chungking and Shanghai.

Welles
  1. Not printed.↩
  2. Representations to the Japanese Foreign Office were made on March 24. Representations were also made by the Consul General at Tientsin to the Provincial authorities. The collection of the tax was discontinued in May.↩