Starting the Drive

As President of all the American people, John Kennedy has a rare talent for blending in with Americans of all kinds. Last week, attending the National Football Foundation's annual banquet in Manhattan, he posed for pictures with a crop of 1961 gridiron stars, fitted in so perfectly that it was hard to tell who were the halfbacks and who was the President. Moving on to the convention of the National Association of Manufacturers, he puffed a cigar with the best of the businessmen, could easily have passed as a prosperous Boston paper-box tycoon. Again, at a roisterous meeting of Young Democrats in Miami, the beaming President was the personification of a Young Democrat. And, a few hours later, speaking to the leaders of the A.F.L.-C.I.O., he looked for all the world like a stem-winding labor orator.

"McKinley & I." Although his week was full of quips and quiddities, the President had his mind on serious subjects--and one of the most important was the problem of U.S. foreign trade. Kennedy plans to make liberalized foreign trade his Administration's major 1962 effort, and his N.A.M. appearance offered a perfect opportunity for starting the drive. "I understand," Kennedy told the businessmen, "that President McKinley and I are the only two Presidents of the United States to address such an occasion. I suppose that President McKinley and I are the only two that are regarded as fiscally sound enough to be qualified for admission."*

Like an eager candidate for membership in the Union League Club, the President ticked off the names of his chief aides who had come from the business community--Secretaries Hodges, Dillon, McNamara, et al. His speech was studded with assurances of his fond feelings toward private enterprise, and one promise drew a burst of applause: "This administration, therefore, during its term of office--and I repeat this and make it as a flat statement--has no intention of imposing exchange controls, devaluing the dollar, raising trade barriers or choking off our economic recovery."

Buckling Down. Then Kennedy buckled right down to the issue of foreign trade: "One of those tools, one which we urgently need for our own wellbeing, is a new trade and tariff policy. The Reciprocal Trade Agreements Act expires in June of next year. It must not simply be renewed; it must be replaced. If the West is to take the initiative in the economic arena, if the United States is to keep pace with the revolutionary changes which are taking place throughout the world, if our exports are to retain and expand their position in the world market, then we need a new and bold instrument of American trade policy."

Kennedy did not go into the specifics of his trade plan, except to say that it would be a dramatic new agreement between the U.S. and the European Common Market: "Let me make it clear that I am not proposing a unilateral lowering of our trade barriers. What I am proposing is a joint step on both sides of the Atlantic, aimed at benefiting not only the exporters of the countries concerned but the economies of all of the countries of the free world. Led by the two great common markets of the Atlantic, trade barriers in all the industrial nations must be brought down."

In Florida, at Bal Harbour's opulent Americana Hotel the next day. the President repeated his message to the leaders of the A.F.L.-C.I.O. "I hope," he said, "that we can maintain a viable economy here with full employment. I'm hopeful we can be competitive here and around the world. I'm hopeful that management and labor will recognize their responsibilities and permit us to compete--that those of you who are in the area of wage negotiations will recognize the desirability of us maintaining as stable prices as possible, and that your negotiations will take adequate calculation and account of this need for us to maintain a balance of trade in our favor."

*Although William McKinley was known as the "high priest of high tariffs" when he first took office, he changed his mind completely in his last days. In Buffalo, President McKinley spoke of his change of heart: "Commercial wars are unprofitable . . . Reciprocity treaties are in harmony with the spirit of the times; measures of retaliation are not." The speech was made just one day before McKinley was fatally shot by Anarchist Leon Czolgosz in 1901.

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