In fact, the House Ways and Means Committee has warned that "*** escape actions should not be lightly undertaken, involving as they do not only the interests of American businessmen and consumers, and of other producers who may lose the benefit of the compensatory concessions which were reciprocally granted to the United States by foreign countries, but also the foreign relations of the United States to a certain degree. Your committee has been impressed with the great impact which escape-clause actions have had upon the foreign relations of the United States."

Adjustments to assist injured industries, not increased tariffs

We of the Friends Committee on National Legislation believe that the escape clause should be restricted to industries which can prove an actual injury as a result of increased imports—not just a potential injury as is now the law. Furthermore, relief should take the form of governmental assistance to facilitate adjustment to United States trade policy-instead of tariff increases as presently provided. As a step in this direction, we support the Kennedy bill, S. 2907 and the amendments proposed by Senators Humphrey, Douglas, and others which would provide technical assistance, loans, and training benefits to communities, enterprises, and individuals who are injured as a result of tariff concessions. The cost of such a program would not be very high as it has been estimated that no more than 200,000 to 400,000 workers would be affected if all tariffs were temporarily suspended. Additional payments of unemployment compensation to displaced workers would be largely offset by savings in unemployment insurance payments in the export industries. Loans to displaced industries would ultimately yield interest payments.

Such a program would not revolutionize our economy but would be of great benefit to both the United States, which has an important stake in having its resources and skills used to the best advantage, and to other nations. It would constitute a more responsible approach to trade problems than we exhibited in raising the United States tariff on Swiss watches. Through this action we benefited a domestic industry responsible for one-fiftieth of 1 percent of United States production, but damaged a Swiss industry which employs 10 percent of the Swiss labor force, and accounts for half their exports to the United States.

Trade adjustment assistance is not a new concept. A similar policy has been adopted by the European Coal and Steel Community and the Common Market. We hope this committee will support a comparable policy.

Other comments

In line with this position, we urge the removal of the administration and House provision which would authorize the President to raise duties under the escape clause to 50 percent above the rates in effect on July 1, 1934. The House committee states that this provision will aid the President in avoiding the use of quotas, which they feel would "if adopted as an instrument of American policy *** destroy our cooperative international trading arrangements, and invite retaliatory restrictions on trade to the detriment of American producers, spreading through all sectors of the American economy.' We submit that the tariff-increasing provision is a step toward what the committee fears. There is no rational reason for tying rates to the 1934 period. This merely increases the subsidy paid by American consumers to certain American businesses.

We regret the House action in authorizing Congress to overturn the President's decision in escape-clause cases. We favor as wide an area of Presidential discretion in the tariff field as is compatible with congressional authority under the Constitution. The President is better informed on the international interests of the United States and better able to weigh these interests against domestic interest. In summary we urge:

1. Extension of the reciprocal trade program for the full 5 years. (We believe a 3-year extension would be inadequate.)

2. Presidential authority to reduce tariffs up to 25 percent during that time, and the other reductions authorized in H. R. 12591.

3. A program to assist industries injured by foreign competition to change over to more competitive lines of production, instead of raising tariffs or imposing quotas.

We oppose:

1. The provision authorizing an increase up to 50 percent above the rates in effect on July 1, 1934, and

2. The provision inserted by the House which authorizes Congress to review the President's decision in escape-clause cases.

Mr. REPLOGLE. I want to bring a new factor into this matterthe moral basis for a liberal trade policy. I suspect that would be appreciated from a religious group such as ours.

I am a businessman and I have bought in some other countries and I have sold to other countries so I personally have had some experience in these matters.

I believe, as was said this morning, that we do have moral obligations in the world and that we are concerned with the well-being of other people in other parts of the world. We have proven that in our treatment of members of other States within our own Union here. We are concerned with the people of Maine and of Texas, and how their standard of living rises.

And we should be, as our vision grows, concerned with the standards of living of other nations of the world.

In that way we can get some sense of social responsibility throughout the world, and that will make for peace.

I realize that these are ideals but without ideals I think nations move backwards rather than forwards.

I had the privilege of testifying before the House Ways and Means Committee in 1955. We see no reason for changing our thinking on that matter, as we said then.

We feel that the best alternative to indefinite cold war capable of exploding almost overnight into armed conflict would seem to us to be a world in which men increasingly learn cooperation, conciliation and in the end find a sense of real brotherhood.

Trade channels that are free, can have beneficial results, in this respect.

The United States should be willing and eager to take the lead in continually pressing for greater movement of goods throughout the world.

We feel that there are benefits economically to be gained from lessening restrictions on trade, and we feel that a reciprocal trade bill such as the House has passed is good. It is a necessary step in that direction.

We feel that the escape clause should be reevaluated. And we are concerned, as Senator Douglas pointed out earlier in these hearings today, that the power given by the House bill to increase duties 50 percent beyond the 1934 levels, is not helpful. We would like to see that stricken from the bill.

We are just as interested in the people who are to be hurt by any lessening of trade restrictions. We are extremely interested in the Kennedy bill, S. 2807, and the amendments which Senators Humphrey and Douglas have proposed, that would help alleviate the hardships that are caused by any adjustment of trade barriers. That help can take some of the forms mentioned in the bill and amendment I have mentioned. We believe that there should be equal concern paid to our fellow citizens who would suffer in this matter.

We are quite concerned that high tariffs, which help preserve some industries, are a subsidy which is shared by all people, all citizens of the United States.

We have more or less accepted the ideal or principle that taxes should be in proportion to the ability to pay. These subsidies in the form of high tariffs make everybody pay the same regardless of whether they have a lot of money or a little money. If industries now protected

by high tariffs could be subsidized on a Government basis from taxes, collected from those who have more to pay, it would be a more equitable arrangement in the light of our present philosophy of taxes.

For these reasons, we urge the extension of the reciprocal-trade program for the full 5 years. We believe that the 3-year extension is inadequate because of the negotiations which must be made with the European Economic Community which will be just coming to a head in 1962.

We support Presidential authority to reduce tariffs up to 25 percent during that time and the other reductions authorized in the House bill, 12591. We urge a program to assist industries injured by foreign competition to change over to more competitive lines of production, instead of raising tariffs or imposing quotas.

And we oppose the provision authorizing an increase up to 50 percent above the rates in effect on July 1, 1934.

And the provision inserted by the House which authorizes Congress to review the President's decision in the escape-clause cases.

Senator LONG. Let me ask you a question about your prepared statement on page 3, you say:

The jeers and stones with which Vice President Nixon was greeted in Venezuela have been credited, in part, to resentment of our trade policy.

Would you feel secure if our supply of fuel in wartime had to depend upon people who throw stones at our Vice President, smash his car window, and spit at his wife? Would you like to see our wartime supply of fuel depend upon those people?

Mr. REPLOGLE. Hardly.

Senator LONG. Would not that provide a good argument in favor of maintaining a domestic oil industry adequate to provide for the needs of our Nation?

Mr. REPLOGLE. That isn't domestic. That is one of the domestic sources.

Senator LONG. I mean, an industry within the United States. Venezuela is more than a thousand miles away by sealanes that could be cut off by Russian submarines. There are no pipelines from Venezuela to the United States.

Do you think that we ought to rely for our wartime supply of fuel upon such a nation to the extent that we do not have an industry of our own to supply our needs?

Mr. REPLOGLE. The answer to that, of course, is no. However, to me, as with the Vice President, I think we should revise our trade policies as best we can to make friends with those people because I believe and most people will, too, I think, that there are good people just like those seeds that they found in the tombs of the Pharaohs, after 6,000 years. Given sunshine and water and nourishment, they grew. I think the good in people, if you can work with them and see their good intentions, can be nourished.

Senator LONG. We ought to be sure that we can meet out of our own market, domestic demand with domestic production if we have to. At present we import about 23 percent of our domestic consumption. We should be especially careful if the relation between our countries have so deteriorated that Americans who represent this country are not safe in Venezuela. Does that tend to prove your case?

Mr. REPLOGLE. I think that the oil industry may be one of those cases where additional subsidy may be in order.

Senator LONG. A subsidy for the oil people after they have gone out of one business and into another?

Mr. REPLOGLE. Not make all of the poor people in the country pay. Pay it out of taxes that are collected from people who have money. Senator LONG. Why shouldn't we simply restrict oil imports to the point where we have a domestic oil industry capable of supplying our needs in wartime?

Mr. REPLOGLE. That would probably be desirable, but let us do it on the basis of subsidy that is understood as such rather than to make it universal as it would be where you raise the duty and raise the prices that everyone has to pay. This is my point.

Senator LONG. It would cost a great deal of money to tax the public that way.

Mr. REPLOGLE. Probably less than the other way. It is a matter of economy.

Senator LONG. I do not know how much the cost of a subsidy would be. The public is not willing to pay the taxes necessary for the large subsidy you have in mind.

That is the last of my questions.

Let me ask you this. Is the Friends organization a Quaker group?

Mr. REPLOGLE. Yes.

Senator LONG. Do Quakers still oppose actual combat in wartime? Mr. REPLOGLE. We do not believe in violence.

Senator LONG. It is a pacifist group?

Mr. REPLOGLE. It grows from the deep concern of the worth of the individual, in every human being, God dwells in people.

Senator LONG. I can appreciate and respect the right of persons to take that attitude. But is it the view of the Friends Committee that we should not resort to armed force to prevent the Russians from seizing this country if they decide to invade us?

Mr. REPLOGLE. It would be the view of the Friends that we should do what we could to build up good will toward this country, so that such an eventuality would not happen.

Senator LONG. But if it did?

Mr. REPLOGLE. If it did, we would try to-we would advocate some way of seeing that it was brought to an early end.

Senator LONG. Would you advocate fighting?

Mr. REPLOGLE. No, we do not. We are not advocating the use of violence.

Senator LONG. That is the point I had in mind. It seems to me that your group believes that we ought to depend upon the Communists in Venezuela because we would not have to fight. It seems to me that it is a matter of national defense to have adequate supplies of oil as long as we are willing to fight.

Mr. REPLOGLE. Let us do it with subsidies, so it makes it even.

Senator MALONE. I do not know that I have any questions to ask you because I have been in two of these wars now and somebody just has to do the fighting until you can figure out a way to keep away from them. I do not regret either one of them and I would go again.

I am past 38 now but I have never seen anything practical advocated for peace regardless of all the books that have been written about it. How are you going to keep the peace except by whipping the fellow

that wants to fight? Sometimes, though, he is pretty big, and it takes a little combination, a little tact. Nobody has come up with a formula as to how to do it except to just whip him, have they?

Mr. REPLOGLE. No, but we must. There is no alternative to peace except destruction with modern warfare.

Senator MALONE. That is right.

Mr. REPLOGLE. So we must find a way and there is where our concern is.

Senator MALONE. We do not want to fight anybody, do we? We just want to go home and have dinner and come back to work. But if there is nothing to do but defend yourself, which happens once or twice in a lifetime, you have to get that over with first, do you not— defend yourself and then go back and talk peace?

Mr. REPLOGLE. There are various ways of defending yourself.
Senator MALONE. What are some of them?

Mr. REPLOGLE. There is such a thing as winning your enemy. know many people say that is impossible, but it can happen.

I

Senator MALONE. I do not think it is. It may take 200 or 300 years, but we may finally do it.

Mr. REPLOGLE. And somebody has to have the ideals.
Senator MALONE. Oh, yes.

Mr. REPLOGLE. And someone has to have the vision to try to do that.

Senator MALONE. But do you think that ideals should let them out of the job of doing whatever there is to be done to win until you start in on another cycle of trying to make friends? Would you advocate that if I joined your church that my family would be kept out of any war and you would just skip that period?

Mr. REPLOGLE. We would certainly advocate a course of action that would prevent war.

Senator MALONE. But after the war is declared, you can certainly understand what I am talking about, you are in a fight. If your family gets in trouble, it isn't a theoretical thing after that. And so you help them out and then start again, don't you?

Well, that is enough.

Mr. REPLOGLE. Well, possibly. We have plenty of Quaker examples where nonviolence was used more successfully than violence, the experiment in Pennsylvania with the Indians, and so forth

Senator MALONE. Yes; I know. You have a lot of examples, too, of different organizations where they went to great lengths not to help the United States in what few critical periods they have been in. I am not talking about the Quakers. I know just what they did do. But pretty near everybody from my part of the country thinks you had better carry your weight in whatever the State or the Nation has decided to do, and then after it's over, debate like we do in the Senate. If we win, all right. If we don't, why we accept that until we can do something else.

Mr. REPLOGLE. We Friends want to carry our weight before that conflict starts.

Senator MALONE. I understand that, but suppose you have a conflict, and you do not want to carry it while the real trouble is on, is that it? I do not know this. I am asking this for information.

Mr. REPLOGLE. There has to be some people of good will in these bad times, people that can keep alive something besides hate that is generated during war.