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Extracted text
OCR Page 1 of 8may or June, 1951
STATEMENT CONCERNING THE KEM AMENDMENT
Nobody, including ECA, can or does object to the purpose of the
Kem Amendment, which is protection of the security interests of the
United States.
ECA does object to the wording for seven principal reasons:
1. The amendment goes too far in that it concentrates upon exports
and completely ignores what is received in return. For instance, one of
the Soviet satellites, under a trade agreement, has just delivered to the
Army Department of a Western European country a complete cartridge factory
capable of turning out 60,000 cartridges for the army in an 8 hour day.
Under the Kem Amendment, that deal could not have been made because some
articles of lesser strategic importance were exported as part of the
trade.
2. The amendment goes too far because it completely ignores the
question of timing. For instance, the ECA Labor advisers have been doing
a magnificent job of aiding European trade unions to combat communist
domination. It is nevertheless and unfortunately true that some unions
are still so dominated. ECA objects to abandoning this missionary work
and being forced to insist that the factories eliminate export business
and throw people out of work, which would play into the hands of the
communists. This leads to the next point.
3. The amendment goes too far because it does not distinguish between
strategic and non-strategic articles and commodities. The sole test,
under the amendment, is: May the article or commodity be used in the
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