Board, conducts investigations of the claims of firms or groups of workers alleg.ing that they are being dislocated or are threatened with dislocation, primarily as a result of the operation of the U.S.-Canadian automotive agreement. The Commission makes such investigations to provide a factual record on the basis of which the Board may make the appropriate determination required by the Act. The Commission's report must be submitted not later than 50 days after the date on which the Board requested the investigation.

2. Investigations pursuant to congressional resolution.-Section 332 of the Tariff Act of 1930 directs the Commission to investigate and report on a wide range of subjects bearing on tariffs and international trade. Formal investigations conducted pursuant to section 332 arise chiefly from congressional resolutions directing the Commission to undertake investigations of specific products or industries.

3. Import interference with agricultural programs.--The American agricultural support programs tend to attract imports because of the relatively high domestic price levels achieved thereunder. Section 22 of the Agricultural Adjustment Act authorizes the President to restrict imports of agricultural commodities if they render, or tend to render, ineffective, or materially interfere with certain programs of the Department of Agriculture. Before the President may take such action, the Tariff Commission is required to conduct investigations, hold public hearings, and to make reports and recommendations to him. Whenever the President imposes restrictions under section 22, the Commission is required to keep the commodities affected under continuing study and to conduct new investigations whenever changed conditions warrant.

4. Probable effect on industries of proposed trade-agreement concessions.— Under section 221 of the Trade Expansion Act of 1962, the President is required. before he enters into negotiations concerning any proposed trade agreement. to transmit to the Tariff Commission a list of the articles that might be made the subject of negotiation. The Commission, in turn, must advise the President, with respect to each article, of its judgment concerning the probable economic effect of reductions in duties on the industries concerned.

In preparing its advice to the President under the new law, the Commission is required, to the extent practicable, to—

(1) investigate conditions, causes, and effects relating to competion between the foreign industries producing the articles in question and the domestic industries producing the like or directly competitive articles;

(2) analyze the production, trade, and consumption of each like or directly competitive article, taking into consideration employment, profit levels. and use of productive facilities with respect to the domestic industries concerned, and such other economic factors in such industries as it considers relevant, including prices, wages, sales, inventories, patterns of demand. capital investment, obsolescence of equipment, and diversification of production;

(3) describe the probable nature and extent of any significant change in employment, profit levels, use of productive facilities and such other conditions as it deems relevant in the domestic industries concerned which it believes such modifications would cause; and

(4) make special studies (including studies of real wages paid in foreign supplying countries), whenever deemed to be warranted, of particular proposed modifications affecting U.S. industry, agriculture, and labor, utilizing to the fullest extent practicable the facilities of U.S. attaches abroad and other appropriate personnel of the United States.

The Commission is required to hold public hearings and to furnish advice to the President within 6 months after receiving the list from the President.

5. Antidumping investigations.-Section 201(a) of the Antidumping Act, 1921. provides that whenever the Secretary of the Treasury determines that a class of merchandise is being, or is likely to be, sold in the United States at less than its fair value, he shall so advise the Tariff Commission. Thereupon, the Commission must determine (within 3 months) whether and industry in the United States is being or is likely to be injured, or is prevented from being established. by reason of the importation of such merchandise into the United States, and must notify the Secretary of the Treasury of its determination.

6. Other: Unfair import practices; differences in production costs.-Section 337 of the Tariff Act of 1930 provdies for the investigation by the Tariff Commission of alleged unfair methods of competition and unfair acts in the importation into, or sale of imported articles in, the United States. An affirmative finding by the Commission may result in exclusion from entry by Presidential order.

Section 336 of the Tariff Act of 1930-the so-called flexible tariff provisionsets forth the procedure by which the improt duty on commodities may be changed by proclamation of the President, after investigation and report by the Tariff Commission, of differences in costs of production in the United States and in the principal competing foreign country. By law, the provisions of section 336 do not apply to any commodity on which a tariff concession is in effect pursuant to a trade agreement.

B. Furnishing technical information and assistance.-An important aspect of the Commission's work involves the furnishing of technical information and assistance to the President, the Congress, and other Federal agencies, as well as private industries and groups. This work arises because of the Commissioner's unique position as a repository of technical information and skill in the fields of tariffs and imports and their effect on domestic industries.

1. Furnishing technical information and assistance to the Congress.—As stated earlier, virtually all of the Commission's formal public investigations instituted under section 332 of the 1930 Tariff Act are undertaken at the specific request of the Congress or congressional committees. The activities here discussed, however, do not include such formal public investigations. Section 332 of the Tariff Act of 1930 requires the Commission to place at the disposal of the Congress, whenever requested, any information or assistance at its command. Over many years, work undertaken at the request of the Congress, congressional committees, and individual Members of Congress has accounted for a substantial share of the Commission's activities. The principal aspects of this work are briefly described below.

Reports to committees of Congress on proposed legislation.-Committees of Congress to which bills and resolutions on tariff and trade matters are referred regularly request the Tariff Commission to analyze proposed legislation. Requests come principally from the House Committee on Ways and Means and the Senate Committee on Finance. In addition, the Commissioner's experts are often requested to assist in the drafting of proposed legislation in accordance with the desires of congressional committees.

Other services to committees of Congress.-Congressional committees regularly request the Tariff Commission for technical assistance with respect to legislation being considered. This assistance usually takes the form of attendance of Commission experts at executive sessions of committees and attendance of one or more members of the Commission's staff to assist the committees at public hearings. While it is impossible to forecast the type and extent of the special services that committees of Congress may require of it, the Commission must be prepared at all times to act on the requests.

Service to individual Members of Congress.-The Tariff Commission also responds to many individual requests by Senators and Representatives for various kinds of information. This service frequently entails considerable research and the preparation of extensive statistical compilations and other material.

2. Furnishing technical information and assistance to other Federal agencies.— The Commission is required by statute to assist other Government agencies in matters in which the Commission has expert knowledge. Requests from other agencies are frequent enough to require a substantial amount of staff time. For example, the Commission is represented on a large number of interdepartmental committees, and, in addition, members of the staff are called upon to attend many other meetings of committees on which they do not regularly serve.

3. Furnishing technical information and assistance to industry and the public.-On specific problems within its special fields of competence, the Commission furnishes information in response to requests from outside the Federal Government. These requests come from such sources as industrial and commercial firms and organizations, labor unions, farm organizations, research organizations, individual research workers, lawyers, editors, and other private individuals. They cover a wide range of subjects: they are received by letter, by telephone. and through personal visits to the offices of the Commission. Complying with them entails such work as the preparation of letters and special statistical compilations and often involves conferences with individuals and representatives of organizations. The Commission is often the only available source, private or public, of the requested information.

The Commission maintains no "public relations" staff. It refers requests for information to the appropriate technical, legal, and economic experts, who handle them as part of their regularly assigned duties.

C. Other reports and activities required by statute

1. Respecting trade agreements.-Under this heading are included all activ ities directly relating to the trade-agreements program except investigations which were discussed previously under activities 1 and 4 of A. Public Invesitgations. The work involves the preparation of the Commission's annual report on the operation of the trade-agreements program and certain related analyses of developments affecting trade agreements. The Trade Expansion Act of 1962 continues the Commission's obligations in this area.

The Commission's reports on the operation of the trade-agreements program are comprehensive studies on that subject prepared to keep the President, the Congress, and the public informed of the progress of the program and of develop ments in one of the major fields of U.S. foreign economic policy. Among other things, the reports include analyses of changes in trade-agreements legislation and procedures; developments respecting the multilateral General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade; concessions granted by the United States in trade-agreement negotiations; actions of the United States that relate to its trade-agreements program; and changes in tariffs, exchange controls, and quantitative import restrictions by countries with which the United States has trade agreements.

The Trade Expansion Act of 1962 and Executive Order 11075, dated January 15, 1963, assign the Commission a variety of responsibilities preparatory to tradeagreement negotiations. Section 211 of the Trade Expansion Act gives the Commission specific responsibilities in determining the articles subject to the elimination of tariff duties in negotiations with the European Economic Community. Section 213 imposes the responsibility of determining whether certain commodities are tropical agricultural and forestry commodities. Section 5(a) of Executive Order 11075 delegates to the Commission the authority conferred upon the President with respect to determining the ad valorem equivalents of the import duties. In addition to the above, the Commission assists as follows in preparing for trade negotiations:

(1) Prepares digests on such articles providing the latest information on production, consumption, trade, and competitive factors.

(2) Makes staff experts available as technical advisers to the interdepartmental committees established to carry on negotiations with other countries. (3) Prepares in appropriate statutory language the final U.S. schedules of tariff concessions granted in the negotiations.

2. Synthetic organic chemicals.-Each year since 1918 the Tariff Commission has published preliminary and final reports on U.S. production and sales of synthetic organic chemicals and the raw materials from which they are derived. The final report supplies statistics on production and sales for each segment of the industry, a directory of manufacturers of the products included, and statistics on imports of chemicals entering the country under paragraphs 27 and 28 of the Tariff Act of 1930.

The Commission also issues monthly statistics on the production of a selected list of synthetic organic chemicals. This series, which was started during World War II, was continued afterward at the request of the chemical industry and various Government agencies. It covers chemicals considered to be representa tive indicators of activity in the industry.

3. Summaries of trade and tariff information.-An activity of major importance in the Commisison's work is preparation of its Summaries of Trade and Tariff Information which present in published form the data which the Commission is required to maintain under section 332 of the Tariff Act of 1930. These summaries contain for each commodity listed in the tariff schedules: The tariff treatment of the commodity; a discussion of the nature and uses of the commodity; analyses of the trends in U.S. production, imports, and exports: data regarding production and conditions of production in foreign countries; and an analysis of the factors affecting the competition of imports with domestic production. Continuous revision of these Summaries of Trade and Tariff Information is one of the basic functions of the Tariff Commission.

The latest general publication of the Summaries of Tariff Information was in 1948. The Commission has developed a program for revising and publishing the Summaries of Tariff Information, and considerable work has been completed on this project. However, the adoption of the new Tariff Schedules of the United States (TSUS) has required the recasting of all such summaries in terms of the new tariff. It is particularly important that this project be completed as soon as possible in order to have available for Congress, other Government agencies, and the public, information in terms of the new tariff schedules,

4. Tariff Classification Act of 1962 (Sec. 201) and Tariff Act of 1930 (Sec. 48} (e)).—Section 484 (e) of the Tariff Act of 1930 directs the Secretary of the Treasury, the Secretary of Commerce, and the Chairman of the Tariff Commission to establish for statistical purposes an enumeration of all articles imported into the United States.

Section 201 of the Tariff Classification Act of 1962 authorizes the Tariff Commission to publish and keep up to date the Tariff Schedules of the United States (TSUS), including statistical annotations formulated pursuant to section 484 (e). For a number of years, the Commission has published a looseleaf document which reports the current tariff status of all articles imported into the United States as well as the special and administrative provisions of the Tariff Act of 1930, as amended. This publication, which is the only Government-published document showing U.S. tariff rates, is for sale by the Superintendent of Documents. The present document shows the Tariff Schedules of the United States with statistical annotations; periodic supplements are issued to reflect changes. In order to carry out the parts of these two provisions relating to statistical matters, an interdepartmental committee of staff experts has been established to consider all questions in regard to the enumeration of imported products for statistical purposes. The chairman of this committee is the Tariff Commission member, and a great deal of the work is done by the Tariff Commission member with the assistance of the tariff experts in the Commission.

5. Other. Under section 332 of the Tariff Act of 1930, the Tariff Commission is required to submit an annual report to Congress on its activities. It is also directed by the provisions of the Tariff Act of 1930 to make analytical reports pertinent to the formation of U.S. tariff and trade policy, including analyses of the commercial policies and practices and foreign trade of other countries and studies of discrimination against U.S. foreign trade.

D. Assembling and analyzing basic data.-Prerequisite to all the varied activities of the Commission is its task of assembling, maintaining, coordinating, and analyzing the basic economic and technical information required in the performance of its specific duties. From this store of information, which must constantly be kept up to date, flows most of the material for the Commission's assistance to the President, the Congress, and congressional committees, its work under special provisions of law, its special reports and studies, its activities under the trade-agreements program, and its assistance to other agencies and Government departments and to the public. Section 332 of the Tariff Act of 1930 makes it the duty of the Commission to gather such information and place it at the disposal of the President, the House Committee on Ways and Means, and the Senate Committee on Finance "whenever requested."

Information on individual commodities comprises the larger part of the Commission's fund of basic information. This information includes technical data on the nature of the commodities and the processes of their production; data on U.S. production, imports, exports, and prices; data on production, imports, exports, and prices for the leading foreign producing and exporting countries; and facts concerning conditions of competition between imported and domestic products. Such information is obtained through fieldwork by technical experts and by the assembly, collation, and analysis of data from domestic producers and importers, and from Government and trade publications.

The remaining major class of basic data has to do with foreign countries— their exports, resources, and industries, their economic, financial, and trade position, and their commercial policies.

The Commission has found that effective fulfillment of its more specific responsibilities requires that a substantial share of the time of its staff must be devoted to this basic research.

Question 2.-Would you give us a brief description of the manner in which executive and administrative matters are generally handled at the present time?

The Commission has delegated to its Director of Administration authority to purchase supplies and equipment necessary for regular operation, to maintain the building and Commission facilities, and to approve appointments of clerical personnel at GS-4 or below. With these exceptions, all other actions and programs in the field of administration must be approved by the full Commission. Such actions include all appointments above GS-4, promotions, transfers, and other personnel actions; travel by any member of the staff or of the Commission, for any purpose and for whatever distance; unusual expenditures for office equipment, furniture, and similar items; requests for staff participation in training activities outside the Commission, whether or not expenditures are involved.

Question 3.-Have present procedures created difficulties?

As indicated in my oral testimony, the major difficulties under present procedures have been well summarized in the Robinson Report (p. 64), as follows: "The Commission, as a collective body, is not well suited to routine adminis trative functions. Its collective actions sometimes slow and hamper day-to-day Agency operations without contributing to the effectiveness of its managerial control. Further, they divert a portion of each Commissioner's valuable time and attention (as well as that of the Commission as a whole) from important substantive matters. On the other hand, in order for the Commission to delegate responsibility for administrative decisions without abdicating fundamental management control, it must develop and communicate appropriate basic management policies and decisions."

Question 4-How do you distinguish between an executive and an administrative function of the Commission?

The terms "executive" and "administrative" are clearly intended to be confined to management functions as distinguished from substantive functions. In this context the dictionaries appear to treat the terms as interchangeable. In any event, subdivisions (1) through (8) of section 1 of the Plan (which describes functions to be transferred to the Chairman the exercise of which are to be subject to general policies of the Commission) definitely limit the scope of either term to functions such as those described in these subdivisions. Question 5.-Were the Commissioners, either as a body or as individuals, consulted by the Bureau of the Budget or by any other appropriate executive branch official with respect to this reorganization plan?

I believe the circumstances in this respect were covered in my oral presentation. Question 6.—In your judgment and experience, are the Commissioners burdened with administrative and routine matters to the detriment of their substantive work?

As I stated in my oral testimony, the Commission spends a considerable amount of time as a body, and the Commissioners as individuals likewise spend considerable time, on administrative aspects of the Commission's work. It seems to me that such time could be better invested in the public interest by increased emphasis on the Commission's substantive activities. Whether the Commission members feel themselves to be "burdened" with administrative routine matters to the detriment of their substantive work appears to be a matter to be determined by each individual Commissioner.

EXECUTIVE OFFICE OF THE PRESIDENT,

BUREAU OF THE BUDGET, Washington, D.C., May 18, 1967.

Honorable ABRAHAM RIBICOFF,

Chairman, Subcommittee on Executive Reorganization,
Committee on Government Operations,

U.S. Senate, Washington, D.C.

DEAR MR. CHAIRMAN: This is in response to the questions we were asked at the conclusion of your subcommittee's hearing on May 3 on Reorganization Plan No. 2 of 1967.

Questions 1 and 2 dealt with the basic functions of the United States Tariff Commission. We believe it is not correct to characterize the Commission as a regulatory agency. Under the Tariff Act of 1930, Antidumping Act of 1921, Agricultural Adjustment Act, Trade Expansion Act of 1962 and Automotive Products Trade Act of 1965, the Commission is responsible for conducting a variety of investigations and studies and advising the President and the Congress of its findings and judgments. Its actions are advisory, not regulatory in nature, and its powers are much more limited than those of the regulatory agencies.

Question 3 dealt with the application of plans similar to Reorganization Plan No. 2 of 1967 to regulatory commissions. Similar plans have gone into effect for the Federal Trade Commission (Plan No. 8 of 1950), Federal Power Commission (Plan No. 9 of 1950), Securities and Exchange Commission (Plan No. 10 of 1950), Civil Aeronautics Board (Plan No. 13 of 1950), Federal Maritime Commission (Plan No. 7 of 1961) and Federal Home Loan Bank Board (Plan No. 6 of 1961). All of those agencies perform regulatory functions.