130. Editorial Note
The House Ways and Means Committee, chaired by Wilbur Mills (D.–AK), began consideration of the Kennedy administration’s request for widened authority to negotiate trade agreements in March 1962. On June 12, the Committee reported legislation (H.R. 1818) that included a provision withdrawing most-favored-nation (MFN) status from Poland and Yugoslavia. The bill passed the House on June 28 by a vote of 298 to 125.
The Senate Foreign Relations Committee took up the bill in July and held 4 weeks of hearings. The Department of State recalled Ambassador Kennan from Yugoslavia and made him available for discussions with members of Congress as part of its effort to secure removal of the provision denying MFN to Yugoslavia and Poland. Kennan recounted his lobbying efforts in Memoirs, 1950–1963, pages 299–305. The effort resulted in a bill that restored MFN status, which the Senate passed on September 19 by a vote of 78 to 8.
[Page 275]The two versions of the bill were sent to a joint House–Senate committee for reconciliation. During these negotiations, Representative Mills insisted on retaining the MFN denial provision, and the final conference report (H. Rpt. 2518) restored the House language on MFN. This bill was passed in the House by a vote of 256 to 91 on October 4 and in the Senate on the same day by a voice vote. The legislation, the Trade Expansion Act of 1962, instructed the President to suspend “as practicable” MFN status granted since 1930 to “any country or area dominated or controlled by communists.” President Kennedy signed the measure into law on October 11 as Public Law 87–974. (76 Stat. 872)