Ext 6116/46(S) 'Secret Weekly Political Intelligence Summaries, nos 356-416, August 1946-November 1947' [‎11v] (22/978)

18
the form of goods or dollars, and of
whether the dollars, if provided, can be
spent outside the United States, has also
been widely discussed. Senator Taft, the
Chairman of the Republican Policy
Committee, who will exert considerable
influence in the forthcoming Congressional
debate, suggested at Boston on the 27th
October that the entire Marshall “ plan ”
might possibly be approved, along with the
interim measures, by the 19th December.
(Not all his Republican colleagues, how
ever, appear to agree with him.) Never
theless, he thought that 4,500-5,000 million
dollars a year should be sufficient to cover
the long-range programme—as against the
much higher amounts which the Adminis
tration is reported to have been con
sidering. On the 29th he insisted that the
apparent cost of the Marshall C£ plan ” in
its present form went “beyond all reason ”
and represented “ a serious threat to any
anti-inflation programme.”
As far as the price question is concerned,
Senator Taft has made it clear that he
entertains little hope of a truce with the
Democrats. He has, in fact, flatly rejected
a proposal to lay party politics aside on
domestic issues during the special session.
The proposal came from Senator J.
Howard McGrath, the newly-elected
Chairman of the Democratic National
Committee, who had just persuaded that
body, in the interest of securing full Con
gressional co-operation, to withdraw* a
resolution criticizing the Republican
record since 1946. In some Congressional
quarters the President has been taken
severely to task for failing to produce a
cut-and-dried plan to deal with inflation
upon which the relevant Committees of the
Senate and House of Representatives could
go to work. It remains to be seen how far
these and other members of Congress will
now accept the thesis of the President’s
Council of Economic Advisers, put for
ward in its report of the 1st November,
that “ the relative shortages of specific
commodities require export controls, alloca
tions for domestic use ... . and the
curbing of speculation ” if a new foreign
aid programme is to be operated success
fully. The Chairman of the House Ways
and Means Committee, who now insists
that he will open the coming session with
a Bill to cut taxation by 4,000 million
dollars, is not likely to welcome the
Council’s contention that “ it would be
undesirable to reduce the level of taxes
while [inflationary] pressures exist.”
Others, however, will probably be reassured
by the Council’s general conclusion that,
given the necessary controls, the United
States economy is well able to withstand
the impact of a programme on the scale
recommended by the Paris Conference.
In linking the tariff agreements signed
at Geneva on the 30th October with the
Marshall offer some thoughtful commen^
tors hasten to point out that the n™
£ £ pattern ’ ’ of international trade is likely
to remain academic unless the economic
crisis in Western Europe can be success
fully surmounted. President Truman
himself described the Geneva agreements
on the 29th October as ££ a landmark in
the history of international economic rela
tions.” Nevertheless, the State Depart
ment has been careful to explain that the
concessions made by the United States are
within the limits prescribed by Congress in
the Reciprocal Trade Agreements Act.
Thus, if a particular tariff reduction
should increase imports so sharply as to
cause or threaten serious injury to a domes
tic industry, that reduction could be
suspended in whole or in part. The other
countries would then be in a position to
withdraw their concessions to a corre
sponding degree.
The unanimous acceptance by the Poli
tical Committee of the United Nations
General Assembly of the compromise reso
lution on ££ warmongering ” has caused the
hope to be expressed that M. Vyshinsky and
his colleagues will again see their way clear
to vote with the majority when really vital
issues have to be decided. This hope was
subsequently seen to be belied, however,
by the Soviet decision to boycott the U.N.
Commission for Korea. In the United
States at large anti-Soviet sentiment still
shows every sign of hardening. The
Chairman of the Senate Committee on the
Judiciary is now apparently pressing for
retaliatory action against the recent Soviet
refusal to permit a group of Congressmen
to visit Moscow (see Summary No. 412),
and, in response to his representations, the
State Department has announced that it is
reviewing its visa policy in the case of
Soviet officials. According to Mr. Lovett
there are 766 such officials and their depen
dants at present in the United States, as
against only 155 Americans in a similar
capacity in the Soviet Union.
^ Meanwhile the drive against native
Communists continues with an intensity
out of all proportion to the numerical
strength which these enjoy. The American
Communist party has consequently been
compelled to announce that it does not see
its way clear at this juncture to join the
new Belgrade ££ Cominform.” Anti-