Double Victory

Protectionism may be dead. But protectionists aren't, and by platoons they paraded before the Senate Finance Committee to protest President Kennedy's program for expanded foreign trade. Last week the committee approved the program--and gave Kennedy his most significant legislative victory of 1962.

The foreign trade measure is perhaps the best and boldest of all the programs sent to Capitol Hill this year. Fashioned to meet the challenge and the opportunity posed to the U.S. by Europe's Common Market, it would extend the President's powers to negotiate bilateral tariff reductions, permit him to slash all existing tariffs by as much as 50%. More important, it would authorize the President to eliminate altogether tariffs on goods produced primarily by the U.S.

and by the six member nations of the Common Market.

The Senate Finance Committee was the bill's last real hurdle. The House passed the measure last June. But then Virginia's Harry Byrd began holding lengthy hearings and, as protectionists nocked before the committee, Administration apprehensions rose. The committee vote, when it finally came, astonished even the bill's most fervent supporters. It was a unanimous 17 to 0, and it gave almost absolute assurance that the whole Senate would soon approve the Administration's program intact.

The House, by a 256-to-134 vote, gave the Administration another win in authorizing the U.S. purchase of up to $100 million in U.N. bonds. The House version differs slightly from that passed by the Senate five months ago: it would forbid the U.S. to buy more than the total amount subscribed by other member nations. The Senate bill authorized outright purchase of $25 million--with the rest, up to the $100 million ceiling, to be bought only if the U.S. purchases were matched by other nations. The difference will be ironed out in a House-Senate conference.

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