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Show SPECIAL WASHINGTON REPORT LEADER SEES BOOM IN OVERSEAS TRADE I By U.S. Rep. Carl Albert 1 National House Majority Leader i ik 103 President Kennedy's Trade Expansion Act of; 1962 is new in many respects. A new kind of authority is being requested to eliminate, overj a five-year period or more, all tariffs and other! trade restrictions on those manufactured items where we and the members of the new Common! Market in Europe together account for 80 or more of world exports. (This excludes trade with or within the Communist bloc.) The President could then negotiate an historic trade agreement with the Common Market. Our exporters can then share in what is one of the CARL ALBERT tastest growing tree markets in the world in return for accepting accept-ing more competition from European Eu-ropean imports here at home. At the same time the President Presi-dent is asking for a new safeguard safe-guard to help individual firms and groups of workers who face genuine hardship adjusting to import competition. Trade Adjustment Assistance, Assist-ance, as it is called, will provide loans and tax benefits to firms, and adjustment and relocation Mr. Albert was elected to the 80th and all succeeding Congresses. He served as House Majority Whip from the 84th Congress through the first session of the 87th Congress, h January, 1962, he was elected Majority Leader of the House. sion Act of 1962. Taking all the tariff negotiations held since has done very well. 1947 together, the United States We have granted tariff concessions con-cessions on some $3 billion worth of trade and obtained concessions on about $4.8 billion. bil-lion. Furthermore, over the past four years our European allies have removed almost all of their quotas and other quantitative quan-titative restrictions on dollar imports except in the area of competitive farm products. Here trade the world over is still set about with quantitative restrictions designed to protect farm price support programs. This is generally true in the case r r allowances to workers who face the prospect of unemployment as the result of import competition competi-tion without the resources to adjust to more competitive production. pro-duction. Unlike tariff protection, which amounts to a direct subsidy, sub-sidy, Trade Adjustment Assistance Assist-ance is a self-help plan, designed to help firms and workers get into more productive work. In judging the merits of this Act, just as with the eleven previous ones, Congress will look hard at the way that the President has used the 'authority delegated to him in the past. And when the record is laid bare, I am confident Congress will support the Trade Expan- oi our own tarm program. Tariffs are now the major obstacles ob-stacles to freer trade between ourselves and our allies in Europe. Eu-rope. The Common Market across the Atlantic, when Britain Brit-ain and other Western European nations join, will be bigger in population than our own. We have the first real opportunity oppor-tunity in our history to extend the principles of free competition competi-tion beyond our borders in a market which is becoming every day more like our own. As wages and incomes rise in Europe Europeans will be buying buy-ing a standard of living ever more like our own. We can share in this growth and gain strength for our own economy if we are willing to bargain now. |