Foreign Relations of the United States, 1964–1968, Volume VIII, International Monetary and Trade Policy

139. Memorandum From Secretary of the Treasury Fowler to President Johnson¹

Washington, August 10, 1967.

SUBJECT

• Our Balance of Payments Problems

In connection with our balance of payments problems, I believe it would be most desirable to have at least two informal off-the-record meetings with you and a very few others from the Administration. These meetings should be held in the very near future.

(1) We should have a meeting on the outlook with respect to our military costs in NATO and in the Far East. Essentially, it should be structured on the Trilateral form, with Secretaries Rusk, McNamara, and myself as principals, and such deputies as would seem desirable. From the White House, I would assume Walt Rostow and Francis Bator would participate. Here, we need to explore the foreign exchange costs of our military deployments, ways and means to neutralize them, and lay out a program to accomplish that purpose.

(2) A meeting designed to discuss the foreign exchange costs of our direct investment program. As my memorandum to you indicates,² there is a great deal of work that has been done on this, but we need to get together to determine specifically what we should do now and for 1968. At that meeting, I would suggest Secretary Trowbridge and his principal advisor in this area, Assistant Secretary Shaw, Arthur Okun, myself, Fred Deming, and Win Knowlton. From the White House, I would think Francis Bator would attend.

Henry H. Fowler

1. Source: Johnson Library, White House Central Files, Confidential File, FO 4–1, Balance of Payments (1967–1969). Confidential. A handwritten note by Fowler on the source text reads: “Note: This was covered generally in our conference this morning.” No record of this meeting has been found. Attached to the source text is a typed note dictated by the President to James R. Jones, dated August 10 at 11:30 p.m., which reads: “That’s all right.” Also attached is a covering memorandum for the record by Jones, August 12, indicating that the first meeting on military costs in NATO and the Far East was scheduled for August 12 at 5:30 p.m., and that Fowler had suggested that the second meeting on foreign exchange costs of direct investment programs not be scheduled until he got back to the White House.
2. Presumably a reference to Document 137.