East-West Trade Trends: Mutual Defense Assistance Control Act of 1951 (the Battle Act); Fourth Report to Congress, Second Half of 1953United States. Foreign Operations Administration
History
East-West Trade Trends: Mutual Defense Assistance Control Act of 1951 (the Battle Act); Fourth Report to Congress, Second Half of 1953
United States. Foreign Operations Administration
Military assistance; Mutual security program, 1951-; United States -- Commercial policy
Fish quotas amounted to $15 million. Nearly all of this was herring.
The leading suppliers were to be Iceland and Norway, and others were
the United Kingdom, the Netherlands, and Denmark.
The U.S.S.R. during the 7-month period also arranged to buy $7 million
worth of citrus fruits from Italy, Japan, and Israel (and apparently
made a whopping profit selling oranges to the Russian people); $4
million worth of cheese from Argentina and the Netherlands; $2.4
million worth of lard from Denmark and Argentina; and $1.4 million
worth of sugar from the United Kingdom and Cuba.
Besides food, the most important consumer item ordered from the West
was textiles. The amount is harder to estimate, but it was somewhat
larger than the Soviet textile imports of any recent year. The
principal suppliers were to be Belgium, France, the Netherlands, Italy,
and the United Kingdom.
In addition to contracts already made, the Soviet officials were still
putting out feelers for consumer goods. Some of them reached across
the Atlantic. In January much publicity was given to the efforts of
an American firm to buy a large quantity of Government-owned surplus
butter and sell it abroad--ultimate destination Russia.
Secretary of Commerce Sinclair Weeks announced on January 15 that he
would not approve any application "which would permit an exporter to
buy butter at considerably lower prices than those paid by the American
housewife and then send that butter into Russia." On February 10 he
announced that it had been "decided as a matter of policy to deny
commercial export license applications for the export for cash of
United States Government-owned surplus agricultural or vegetable fiber
products to Russia or her satellites." He pointed out, however, that
this ban "does not preclude study of export license applications for
these nonstrategic products to the Soviet bloc if acquired by exporters
in the open market and not from the Commodity Credit Corporation
surplus stocks."
It is difficult at this writing to compare the Soviet Union's new
commitments to buy consumer goods with the actual imports of previous
years. _Total_ free-world exports to the U.S.S.R. in 1953 are estimated
at $410 million (compared with $481 million in 1952) but how much of
this $410 million was consumer goods is not yet determined. The 1954
figure can only be speculated upon. But certain generalizations about
consumer goods are possible.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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