611.5131/1015
Memorandum by the Under Secretary of State (Phillips) of a Conversation With the French Ambassador (Laboulaye), November 8, 193434
The French Ambassador called this afternoon to explain the instructions which he had recently received from his Government regarding trade conversations. It appeared that Garreau-Dombasle in his conversations with the Department had gone too far in giving the impression that the French Government would be disposed to extend a general minimum tariff to American imports into France. De Laboulaye said that the French law, as it stands, would make this impossible and that the best which could be done would be to extend the minimum tariff to American imports entering under the quota system. He added, however, that the door would be left open to lowering the French tariff on articles of American produce which did not come within the category of quotas and which were subjected to a higher tariff. He gave me the impression that in the bargaining process, many of these articles might be accorded the minimum tariff but that the French Government could not extend a minimum tariff to cover them all in at once.
The Ambassador then referred to the trade agreements of 192735 and 193236 and intimated that one of the important features of a new trade agreement would be to regulate some of the advantages which were now extended provisionally. This, he thought, was a very important point because if there was no trade agreement between the two countries established fairly soon, American imports might be worse off than ever. (The Ambassador in this last remark did not put forward this suggestion as a threat, but my interpretation of it, nevertheless, was something in the nature of a threat.) The Ambassador concluded his remarks by urging me to do everything I could to go forward with an agreement and spoke at some length of the importance which he attached to so doing. In reply I did not give him any assurance one way or another beyond assuring him that we would study the situation very carefully.
- The substance of this memorandum was transmitted to the Embassy in France in Department’s telegram No. 464, November 19, 4 p.m.; not printed.↩
- See Foreign Relations, 1927, vol. ii, pp. 631 ff.↩
- See ibid., 1932, vol. ii, pp. 195 ff.↩