White House Press Release, Statement by Winthrop W. Aldrich

313 #753-A July 9, 1946 Winthrop W. Aldrich, Chairman of the Committee for Financing Foreign Trade, recently appointed by the President made. the following state- ment today: In his letter appointing the Committee the President said in part: "It is of vital importance to our country and to the stabilization of the international economy, that we proceed as rapidly as possible with another of the major objectives of our reconversion program; namely to tie in our national productive capacity with the world's reconstruction requirements. The conduct and financing of our foreign trade should be handled by private industry with the cooperation and such assistance as is necessary from the proper Govern- ment agencies." Government loans to other governments are necessary like many other things done in war or the aftermath of war. They cannot be the continuing basis of international trade between free countries; they should be supplemented and eventually replaced by private international financing. The Government is doing its part. The President has appointed this Committee to encourage industry and private capital to do its part. The Department of State explained last May to the representa- tives of foreign governments having purchasing missions in this country that the policy of the American Government favors the use of private commercial channels in international trade and proposed that "such trading agencies should conduct their trade in accordance with usual commercial considerations." The Government has done and is doing, through the Export- Import Bank, its part in making the wheels of trade begin to move. The Government has further subscribed to the International Bank and the International Fund set up under the Bretton Woods Agreement. It has in the Office of International Trade in the Department of Commerce, which is primarily concerned with foreign trade promotion, a specialized staff to study the effects of loans on the expansion of foreign trade and our domestic economy. That office has already pointed out that while there are less goods of many kinds than our own population demands, there are already some fields in which surplus capacity is looming up. Generally speaking, the function of the Committee, as I see it, will be to devise ways and means, in cooperation with the National Advisory Council, to accomplish the following purposes: First: to bring into orderly common effort public and private finance, through businessmen and bankers, in the foreign field; Second: to foster the application of the productive capacity of the United States in the most effective manner possible to the needs of domestic consumption and foreign reconstruction; Third: to promote relations between American and Foreign business enterprise for the purpose of developing and maintaining foreign trade, both export and import, on a high and expanding level. (OVER)