112. Editorial Note
Under Secretary Dillon left Washington on October 13 to attend the Ministerial Meeting of the 15th session of the Contracting Parties to the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade, to be held in Tokyo October 27–29. En route, he stopped at Okinawa, Hong Kong, Taipei, and Seoul for discussions with local and U.S. officials.
The Department of State issued an October 25 press release about the meeting:
“An important subject of attention at the Ministerial Meeting and during the rest of the session is the relationship between commercial policy and the new financial situation created early this year when, reflecting improved balance-of-payments and reserve positions, all of the European currencies important in international trade were made externally convertible. U.S. representatives will emphasize that, given the new currency situation, discriminatory import restrictions can no longer be justified on financial grounds. A number of countries have accelerated their progress this year in removing quantitative restrictions against exports from the dollar area, but further progress is necessary to complete the job. A major objective of the U.S. delegation [Page 236] to the Tokyo meeting will be to encourage other countries to eliminate rapidly the remaining discriminations against dollar goods and generally to reduce the level of their quantitative import restrictions.” (Department of State Bulletin, November 9, 1959, page 680)
Dillon emphasized these points in an October 27 statement before the Ministerial Meeting. For text, see American Foreign Policy: Current Documents, 1959, pages 1520–1527.
On October 28, he met with the Japanese Minister of Finance and other Japanese officials to discuss economic issues, including a U.S. desire that Japan liberalize its trade policies. A memorandum of this conversation is scheduled for publication in volume XVII.
The following day, the Ministerial Representatives attending the GATT session issued a communiqué on their discussions. It acknowledged that “there was no longer any justification on balance-of-payments grounds, for discriminatory restrictions by countries whose export earnings were largely in convertible currencies.” The communiqué stated further that “the present favorable climate of international trade made it important to press on with the GATT programme for trade expansion,” specifically, arrangements for the 1960–1961 tariff conference, examination of ways to expand agricultural trade, and efforts to help developing countries increase their export earnings. For text, see American Foreign Policy: Current Documents, 1959, pages 1527–1529.
On the last day of the GATT session, November 20, the U.S. Delegation released a report on the meeting’s accomplishments. (Ibid., pages 1529–1533) Additional documentation on the proceedings is in Department of State, Central File 394.41.