Another Kind of Protection

Commerce Secretary Sinclair ("Sinny") Weeks once dismayed partisans of freer world trade by publicly labeling himself a "protectionist." That was five years ago. Last week chunky, mild-mannered Secretary Weeks, 64, rock-ribbed Massachusetts Republican of the old school that traditionally considered tariff protectionism a fundamental GOPrinciple, stomped in out of a snowstorm to appear before the House Ways and Means Committee. He was there as the Administration's chief spokesman for what may be 1958's most bitterly fought legislative proposal: the bill to promote freer trade by 1) extending the reciprocal trade act for five years instead of the usual three, and 2) enlarging the President's tariff-trimming powers.

Witness Weeks's theme was still protection, but protection of another kind. "I am here," he said, "to urge legislation to make jobs and protect jobs--the jobs of the more than 4 1/2 million Americans whose livelihood is provided by world trade."

Saving Vote. If Weeks's testimony marked a striking shift in personal outlook, it also marked a shift in Administration strategy. Back in 1955, when the Trade Agreements Act of 1934 came up for renewal, the State Department spearheaded the Administration case, arguing for reciprocal trade in terms of free-world strength and solidarity. On the floor of the House that year, a single vote saved the reciprocal trade bill from butchery by amendment. Facing an even rougher fight this year because of recession at home and keener import competition from abroad, Eisenhower & Co. decided to switch the task of defending reciprocal trade from

State to Commerce, from foreign policy to domestic self-interest.

Setting out to battle tariff lobbies, Convert Weeks put Commerce Department staffers to work drafting a series of studies detailing the beneficial effects of foreign trade in 120 different Congressional districts. As of last week, ten studies had been completed and hand-delivered by Commerce Department officials to the ten. Congressmen from the districts covered. Studying Commerce's brochure on Connecticut's First District (machinery-manufacturing Hartford), the district's Republican Representative Edwin Hyland May Jr. made up his mind to vote for the Administration bill.

Blunted Hatchet. To the Ways and Means Committeemen, Witness Weeks pointed out that the U.S. sells abroad 9% of all the movable goods it produces, that U.S. exports in 1957 added up to $19.5 billion, a sum greater than the domestic sales of the entire U.S. automobile industry. Added Agriculture. Secretary Ezra Taft Benson: in 1957 the U.S. exported $4.7 billion worth of farm products, about one-tenth of the total output. In order to protect the nation's vast and vital export trade, argued Weeks and other Administration witnesses, the U.S. must import goods so that foreign countries can earn dollars to buy U.S. products.

Predictably, all this made no detectable dent in the iron-clad convictions of the House's high-tariff camp, led by Pennsylvania's husky Republican Representative Richard M. Simpson. Tariffanatic Simpson is bent on pushing through an amendment that would, in effect, leave tariff power under Congressional control, hatchet the President's power to overrule Tariff Commission recommendations for "escape clause" tariff increases--a power that Ike has used to scotch 14 of the 23 increases the commission has recommended during his five years in office.

As the Administration sees it, the President must keep this authority because the interest of a particular industry must be weighed against the national interest. Last week this viewpoint got an unexpected boost from the six-man Tariff Commission itself. Louisiana's Representative Hale Boggs, one of Capitol Hill's most ardent freer-traders, asked the commission members, seated together below the Ways and Means Committee's walnut dais, whether they thought their escape-clause recommendations ought to be final. Commission Chairman Edgar B. Brossard mugwumped, but the other five members all said no. Commented Boggs: for Congress to pass the Simpson proposal in the teeth of the Tariff Commissioners' own testimony would be "utterly ridiculous."

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