Whither Tariff Policy?

To find a policy path in a jungle of opinions and interests, President Eisenhower last summer appointed a 17-member Commission on Foreign Economic Policy, headed by Inland Steel Co.'s Board Chairman Clarence B. Randall (TIME, Aug. 24). The commission, currently holding closed-door hearings in Washington, is expected to report to the President early next year. Meanwhile, the determination to find a sound foreign-trade policy has set off a major tariff-policy debate in the nation.* Last week, two familiar figures spoke up: P: In Manhattan, Henry Ford II was the principal speaker at the first big meeting of the Committee for a National Trade Policy. Made up of top-flight business leaders, the newly formed committee is dedicated to spreading the lower-tariff gospel by distributing detailed information about the benefits increased foreign trade would bring to particular communities and regions in the U.S.

"We cannot hope to unify the free world militarily and politically," said Speaker Ford, "if at the same time we divide it economically. A protectionist policy is divisive." Furthermore, he argued, protectionism is opposed to the economic self-interest of most U.S. industrialists, workers and farmers, both as producers and as consumers: "The tariff is a form of subsidy [that] penalizes the many in order to help the few." Free trade would hurt some U.S. producers, but "the adjustments . . . would be no greater than those which normally accompany technological change." P: In Washington, Bernard Baruch had his say before the Randall Committee. Word leaked out that he had advised the committee to 1) "proceed with care in any adjustment" of tariff barriers, 2) take other types of trade obstructions into account. "At present," said Baruch, "the lack of stable currencies is a far more serious obstacle to free trade than tariff barriers ... As long as currencies continue to be manipulated [by governments], all trade is forced through government channels . . . Nothing stimulates trade more than the knowledge that currencies are freely interchangeable."

*Or one-third of the nation. The Gallup poll reported last week that only one voter out of three in a cross-section survey said yes when asked whether he had "heard or read anything" about the tariff issue. Of this "informed" one-third, 50% thought tariffs should be lowered, 21% thought they should be raised. The rest favored no change, or had no opinion at all.

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