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Show TRADE PACTS HELD TO BE BOON TO PEACE AS WELL AS BUSINESS WASHINGTON, Jan, 15 (AP) Edward J. Noble, tinder-secretary of commerce, today said the reciprocal trade agreement! program pro-gram not only was justified in dollars and cents, but had created a new avenue lor the interchange of goods and services on which! world peace and prosperity depended, . . I Noble submitted his views to the' house ways and means committee, being the third administration witness wit-ness supporting legislation that would extend the treaty-making authority expiring June 12. He offered statistics he ssld showed that the United States' trade with the 30 countries entering enter-ing Into reciprocal tariff arrangements arrange-ments had risen 60 per cent, while the exchange with nonagreement countries had Increased only 30 per cent. "While I do not contend that the Increase In our exports to sgree-ment sgree-ment countries Is du entirely to this program." Noble'a statement to the committee said, ''Certainly It 1 significant that over a period pe-riod of years, exports to these countries have Invariably made a much more favorable showing than exports to other countries." Recalling that former Secretary of Commerce Roper had Indorsed the trade sgreements program In 1934 and In 1937, Noble said: "The department of commerce I tlll convinced that this program pro-gram 1 beneficial not only to our foreign trade but to the economic activity of the entire country . . . "We know that our traders and manufacturers cannot prosper unless un-less our farmers, our miners, our livestock men and all other types of producers also prosper. We have no interest in promoting any one type of trade at the expense of any group of our producers." Noble testified that the department depart-ment made a careful survey of the nation's principal exports in 1932, when foreign trade had dropped oft two-thirds of its dollar volume, and found: "Almost unanimously traders told us that the chief barriers to recovery of our foreign trade volume vol-ume were the new restrictions of every kind in such things ss excessively ex-cessively high tariffs, Import quotas, quo-tas, exchange controls, which had sprung up throughout the world. "The trade agreements act recognized rec-ognized the difficulty of any attempt at-tempt based upon the simultaneous simultane-ous action of a large number of countries. Instead, the trade agreementa program provided for bilateral negotiations between the United States and individual foreign for-eign countries, in which we got something for our cuts." Aside from specific concessions for United Statea exports, Noble said that from the business man's point of view, the equality of opportunity op-portunity brought about by the most-favored-nation sections of the agreements legislation "is perhaps per-haps of most significance." |