Priority Topics

Apart from talking straight from the shoulder on the Berlin crisis. President Eisenhower used his news conference last week to get on the record on three priority topics of the day. Items:

Foreign Trade. "I believe that the reason we are having so much trouble competing with the other countries ... is that our costs are too high. We cannot continue to increase these costs and have the kind of foreign trade that will make our own country prosperous ... If we give way to the idea of just increasing tariffs along the line ... I just believe we are making the gravest mistake we could make."

Inflation & Taxes. "I have always urged that wage increases should be measured by increase of productivity, and I think that there would be no inflationary effect [i.e., price increases] if they were measured by that criterion. We shouldn't be so prone to ... decry profits in our economy. We tax profits. We don't tax industrial activity as such. So, if you are trying to get profits down to zero you are going to have to find some other way of finding federal revenue, if we are going to run this Government, I assure you."

Defense Rivalry. "There are conflicting views in any proposal that humans make . . . Now, you are certainly not going to get [agreement among chiefs of the Armed Forces] who . . . believe that in their service, in their own function, lies the safety of the U.S. Someone has to make the decision. That happens to be the Commander-in-Chief. Now, and I must say this, and I think possibly this is the first time that I have ever violated my own conception of humility and modesty: I think I am more able than any one of those [Pentagon chiefs] ... to make an overall decision on behalf of the U.S. in this vital matter, because I again assure you that just . . . spending money does not make us stronger. Indeed, if you spend too much money, you will make us weaker. Remember, our system is a balanced one. We should not concern ourselves so much when somebody makes a demagogic talk about a missile, or somebody else about a different submarine or a piece of radar. You have got a whole level of balanced types of equipment, training, organization and strategy that we believe fits our system."

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