The Grand Design

Thanks to the research of Matthew Stoller:  NAFTA Origins, Part One:  The Original NAFTA Included Great Britain we have a copy of a hearing on Foreign Trade Policy from 1967.  This is a very  important hearing because it set the direction -  "The Grand Design"  of  U.S. trade policy from that point to this very day.  Stoller put a link at the bottom of his article to download the full hearing.  It's 418 pages long so I downloaded it and split it up into the hearing days to make it a little easier to manage.  The table below has the extracted hearing days, front matter and appendix listed as separate pdfs.  The page numbers are from the original full document.  

07-11-1967
1-6
 
Front Matter

Hearing participants; schedule of hearings and witness list.

Joint Committee Hearing - purpose:  "a broad reassessment of U.S. foreign trade policy". 
 

07-11-1967

 

7-68
 
Hearing - Day 1

Witness:

Ambassador William Roth, President's Special Representative for Trade Negotiations
 

07-12-1967
69-120
 
Hearing - Day 2

Witnesses:

Anthony Solomon, Assistant Secretary of State for Economic Affairs. Solomon was ill the day of the hearing but his Deputy, Mr. Joseph A. Greenwald, Deputy Assistant Secretary for International Trade Policy stood in for Solomon.
Lawrence McQuade, Acting Assistant Secretary for Domestic and International Business, Department of Commerce. 
Congressional Delegates to the Kennedy Round: 

Cecil R. King, U.S. Representative from Calif. and a Delegate to the Kennedy Round
Thomas B. Curtis, U.S. Representative from Missouri and a Delegate to the Kennedy Round
 

 

07-13-1967
121-176
 
Hearing - Day 3

Witnesses: 

Aurelio Peccei, Vice-Chairman of Olivetti, Member of the Steering Committee of Fiat-Turin, and President of Italconsult, Rome. 
Kenneth Younger, Director, Royal Institute of International Affairs, London.

Noteworthy:  Peccei was there to testify on U.S. trade policy.  No mention in his biographical information that his degree was in Economics with his thesis on Lenin's New Economic Policy. 

Page 14 - "To promote trade to the benefit of developing countries, in the order of magnitude which would be required, we must accept in practice not only in principle, the need for an international redistribution of labor and production.  The principle has been heralded forcefully and insistently, but the practice has not yet been adopted, if not in a token measure". 
   This is an extremely unpalatable proposition, since it entails first of all a bold action within our own countries, and also a willingness to assume delicate political and economic consequences.  It is in fact a double-edged blade, because we should decide gradually to eliminate within our own economies certain productions, even though the most elementary, and at the same time open our doors to the imports of the same products from abroad.
   In the process, domestic production and import production will have to compete on an uneven basis, and instead of pursuing protectionist policies, which would be called for in classical patterns, we should extend a preferential treatment."

Page 15 - "One important fact should be borne in mind, that is that international trade is no longer going to be governed by a purely mercantile basis. International trade requires a more complex and sophisticated approach; industrial and financial investments, consultative activities and technical assistance become part and parcel of the commercial activity at large.  Trade demands nowadays a global participation in the challenging venture of economic development".

Page 38 - Developed-Underdeveloped and East-West Relations by Aurelio Peccei.  He quotes Robert McNamara, "Security is Development" (pg. 46)...   A Pragmatic Approach needed: "Secondly, that the program be entrusted in fact to a non-political non-controversial institution such as a foundation of high repute; whose task should be to prepare the terms of reference and then to mobilize and co-opt the most qualified institutions, research centers, academies and individual experts from all over the world".

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In 1968 - the Club of Rome was founded by Aurelio Peccei and Alexander King, OECD (formerly OEEC) with Rockefeller money and influence. 

The significance of Aurelio Peccei's testimony in this hearing is that it reveals the true agenda of the Club of Rome (MIT study - Limits to Growth, etc.) It wasn't about the environment.  That was just the cover story for what Peccei was really after - which was the transfer of wealth and technology from the United States to the rest of the world - including Europe.  Implicit in his testimony was the call for de-industrialization of the U.S. and industrialization of the third world.  Which is exactly what the Congress enabled through the fast track sell-out of the United States.   
 

07-18-1967

 

177-222
 
Hearing - Day 4

Witnesses:

S.M. McAshan, Jr. President, Anderson, Clayton & Co., Houston, TX
Carl J. Gilbert, Chairman of the Executive Committee, The Gillette Co., Boston, Mass
Henry W. Balgooyen, President, American & Foreign Power Co., New York, NY
N.R. Danielian, President, International Economic Policy Association.

Article entered into the record:

Commodity Agreements: Bonanza or Illusion?  By John A. Pincus  (pg 4)
 

07-19-1967

 

223-274
 
Hearing - Day 5

Witnesses:

William Diebold, Jr., Council on Foreign Relations
Professor Robert E. Baldwin, Economics, University of Wisconsin
Professor Richard N. Cooper, Economics, Yale University
John Pincus
, The Rand Corporation
Professor Lawrence W. Witt, Agricultural Economics, Michigan State Univ.

Article entered into the record:

National Economic Policy in an Interdependent World Economy by Richard N. Cooper (pg 13)
 

07-20-1967

 

275-306
 
Hearing - Day 6

Witnesses:

David Rockefeller, President, Chase Manhattan Bank
George W. Ball, former Under Secretary of State

Testimony of George Ball:

"Thirty-three years ago the United States abruptly reversed the course of its commercial policy and set its compass in a direction that we have been following ever since.  The decision to steer by a new chart was born of economic hard times. It was based on the simple, straight-forward proposition that our high tariff policies had, by fragmenting world markets, dried up international trade and helped to produce a worldwide depression. By the Reciprocal Trade Agreements Act of 1934 we undertook, through freeing the movement of goods, to stimulate business for our farms and factories, to create jobs, and to help a battered world find its way back toward prosperity."

"...It is the ability to look out over the world and freely survey all possible sources of production, to study markets, and to use all of the factors of production with great flexibility that is enabling man to employ the world's finite stock of resources with a new degree of efficiency for the benefit of all  mankind.
    But to fulfill its full potential the multinational corporation must be able to operate with little regard for national boundaries--or, in other words, for restrictions imposed by individual national governments.
   To achieve such a free trading environment we must do far more than merely reduce or eliminate tariffs. We must move in the direction of common fiscal concepts, a common monetary policy, and common ideas of commercial responsibility".

"...Implied in this, of course, is a considerable erosion of the rigid concepts of national sovereignty..."
 

07-20-1967

 

307-418
 
Appendix

Quantitative Restrictions Affecting U.S. Exports (pg 1).  Source: House Ways and Means Committee: Trade Expansion Act of 1962 hearings.

Summary of Foreign Control Regulations Applying to Imports From the United States (pg 2).  Source: Foreign Commerce Weekly, Dec. 25, 1961

Non-Tariff Trade Barriers of the United States (pg 43).  Source: Study and presentation of the United States-Japan Trade Council before the Trade Information Committee established pursuant to the Trade Expansion Act of 1962.

National Chamber Calls For New Flexibility to "Most-Favored-Nation" World Trade Principle.  (pg 55)

Foreign Trade Policy Statement, Chamber of Commerce of the United States, June 30, 1967.  (pg 56)

Programme for the Liberalization and Expansion of Trade in Manufacturers and Semi-Manufactures of Interest to Developing Countries.  (pg 58)  Source: United Nations Conference on Trade and Development.

The Question of the Granting and Extension of Preferences in Favour of Developing Countries: A System of Preferences for Exports of Manufactures and Semi-manufactures from Developing to Developed Countries.  (pg 78) Source: Report by the UNCTAD Secretariat