Tariff Fortress

Tariff-happy American manufacturers are perfecting new strategy suitable for a cold war and hot nerves. Even where industrialists can no longer point to low foreign wages as a source of unfair competition, they now insist that America must protect itself by barricading its defense fortress with high tariff walls.

Nearly every industry, of course, can claim some wartime usefulness, no matter how tenuous the thread connecting it with military production. After the President had approved the demands of American watch-makers for increased tariffs, last year, even fertilizer and gut-string factories filed clever rationalizations for protection.

If the Administration approved absurd demands for tariff protection-or even approved all the recommendations of the U.S. Tariff Commission-the Reciprocal Trade program would collapse. While fighting for a three-year extension of the Reciprocal Trade program in his Foreign Trade Bill, the President has also asked for the right to lower tariffs at his own discretion within specified limits. The diplomatic twins of foreign good will and fiscal health, the President has realized, rely upon trade with the United States. Aid is no longer a realistic alternative to trade. Americans are no longer willing to give economic doles, and European countries will no longer accept them as substitutes for the foundation of sound home industry.

In balancing Reciprocal Trade against American tariff claims, President Eisenhower has rejected eight of the ten tariff hikes recently proposed by the U.S. Tariff Commission. But as the chief of a projectionist political party, the President has never been able to establish the precise tariff standard needed to balance American allies against American domestic defense. The President's Foreign Trade Bill faced devastating Republican opposition in the House, barely passing without crippling amendments. Now, in the Upper Chamber, the bill is currently under the fire of sharpshooting projectionist Senators.

And as the Congressional clamor rises, industries well beyond the pale of national defense have capitalized on the furor. Bicycle manufacturers, for example, have hoped that the President would raise their tariff protection to silence their lobby against the foreign trade bill. It would be unfortunate if the President bowed to these requests in an attempt to save his entire Foreign Trade Program. By following the Tariff Commission recommendation for boosted bicycle rates, the President would set a precedent that might reinforce his opposition. Other non-defense manufactures would cite the bicycle tariff as a basis for universally higher tariff rates.

Not only would these higher rates cripple foreign manufacturers; they would weaken our own. Economic nursing seldom strengthens industries; it releases the pressure for self-improvement that make them most valuable in wartime.