Foreign Relations of the United States, 1961–1963, Volume IX, Foreign Economic Policy

317. Letter From Secretary of State Rusk to Secretary of Commerce Hodges⁰

Washington, September 5, 1962.

Dear Luther: This is in response to the suggestion in your letter of August 17 about the possibility of negotiating an expansion of multilateral controls on trade with the Soviet bloc.¹

I realize that the National Security Council on July 17 discussed the idea of a determined effort to get our Allies to agree to a higher level of multilateral export controls, but I am not aware of any agreement having been reached that a special attempt along those lines should be made, nor does NSC action 2455 record any such agreement.

In my judgment, we could not at this time obtain agreement in COCOM on an expansion of export controls. Prevailing attitudes in Western Europe and Japan on Soviet bloc trade, when coupled with the rule of unanimity in the Coordinating Committee, make it clear that negotiations would be fruitless. At a time when we are engaged in talks with the Soviets on matters of major political importance, I would not wish to undertake trade control negotiations which I believe could not succeed and which would seem likely to have an adverse impact on our bilateral talks with the Soviets and add to the differences among the NATO Alliance countries. In saying this, I wish to add that should the situation in Berlin or elsewhere take a marked turn for the worse, I would expect that NATO would promptly take up the imposition of selected economic countermeasures as one of several important indicators to the Soviets of the unity of the Western nations in the face of a crisis. As you know, last year NATO agreed in principle on a total economic embargo on the Soviet bloc in the event of blockage of access to Berlin and on air countermeasures in the event of significant air corridor harassment.

As I wrote you on August 9 we have been proceeding under NSC Action 2455 to develop a code of fair practices.² We have now sent you a draft of such a code and I hope to have your views on it in the near future.³

With warm personal regards,

Sincerely,

Dean⁴

0. Source: Department of State, Central Files, 460.509/8-1762. Secret. Drafted by Trezise and Clarence T. Breaux (E/MDC) on August 23, and retyped in S/S on September 1.
1. In his August 17 letter to Rusk, Hodges proposed negotiations on expansion of trade in the NATO Council of Economic Advisers and on expansion of the level of export controls in the Consultative Group. (Ibid.)
2. Document 316.
3. The draft Code of Fair Practices in International Trade was sent to Hodges on September 5 under cover of another letter from Rusk requesting “views and suggestions before proceeding further in discussion bilaterally with other NATO countries.” (Department of State, Central Files, 460.119/9-562)
4. Printed from a copy that indicates Rusk signed the original.