Victory for GATT

The U.S. scored a major victory last week in its fight for free trade. After five months of tariff negotiations, U.S. Deputy Under Secretary of State Herbert V. Prochnow and delegates from 21 other nations put their names to a new General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade in Geneva. The new tariffs agreement covers more than three-fourths of all world trade; total concessions will reach $2.5 billion yearly in reduced tariffs.

Major U.S. concessions, which cover a long list of goods from books to buttons to safety matches, were made under discretionary powers given President Eisenhower under the Reciprocal Trade Agreements Act. Partly because of U.S. leadership, many another nation pulled down its barriers to trade. West Germany made a record number of deals with Scandinavian countries to exchange machinery for farm products. Japan, which has been blackballed by the British Commonwealth and other nations, was permitted for the first time to take part in the GATT negotiations. Europe's high-tariff small nations consented to unprecedented reductions; e.g., Italy cut tariffs about 12% on imports from Austria and the U.S.

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