13 products, and eggs. If we should lose a substantial part of this foreign market, the incomes of over six million farm families would be materially reduced and their buying power for the products of our factories greatly curtailed. 6. There is no intention to sacrifice one group to benefit another group. Negotiations will be directed toward obtaining larger markets, both foreign and domestic, for the benefit of all. 7. No tariff rate will be reduced until an exhaustive study has been made, until every person who wishes a hearing has been heard and careful consideration given to his case. 8.. In every future agreement, there will be a clause that permits this Government-or any other government-to modify or withdraw a concession if it should result, or threaten to result, in serious injury to a domestic industry. This is now required by the Executive order which I issued on February 25, following extensive conferences between officials in the Department of State and majority leaders in the Senate. All these points-the history of trade-agreement operations, the way in which negotiations are conducted, the protection afforded by the safeguarding clause should provide assurance, if assurance is needed, that domestic interests will not be injured. The policy of reducing barriers to trade is a settled policy of this Government. It is embodied in the Reciprocal Trade Agreements Act, fathered and administered for many years by Cordell Hull. See Department of State Bulletin of Mar. 9, 1947, p. 436. 1 It is reflected in the charter of the International Trade Organization. It is one of the cornerstones of our plans for peace. It is a policy from which we cannot-and must not-turn aside. To those among us-and there are still a few-who would seek to undermine this policy for partisan advantage and go back to the period of high tariffs and economic isolation, I can say only this: Take care! Times have changed. Our position in the world has changed. The temper of our people has changed. The slogans of 1930 or of 1896 are sadly out of date. Isolationism, after two world wars, is a confession of mental and moral bankruptcy. Happily, our foreign economic policy does not now rest upon a base of narrow partisanship. Leaders in both parties have expressed their faith in its essential purposes. Here, as elsewhere in our foreign relations, I shall welcome a continuation of bipartisan support. Our people are united. They have come to a realization of their responsibilities. They are ready to assume their role of leadership. They are determined upon an international order in which peace and freedom shall endure. Peace and freedom are not easily achieved. They cannot be attained by force. They come from mutual understanding and cooperation, from a willingness to deal fairly with every friendly nation in all matters-political and economic. Let us resolve to continue to do just that, now and in the future. If other nations of the world will do the same, we can reach the goals of permanent peace and world freedom. UNITED STATES OF AMERICA JUL 15:47 The Requirements of By UNDER SECRETARY ACHESON1 ou who live and work in this rich agricultural YOU region, whose daily lives are concerned with the growth and marketing of cotton and corn and other agricultural products, must derive a certain satisfaction from the fact that the greatest affairs of state never get very far from the soil. When Secretary of State Marshall returned from the recent meeting of the Council of Foreign Ministers in Moscow he did not talk to us about ideologies or armies. He talked about food and fuel and their relation to industrial production, and the relation of industrial production to the organization of Europe, and the relation of the organization of Europe to the peace of the world. The devastation of war has brought us back to elementals, to the point where we see clearly how short is the distance from food and fuel either to peace or to anarchy. Here are some of the basic facts of life with which we are primarily concerned today in the conduct of foreign relations: The first is that most of the countries of Europe and Asia are today in a state of physical destruction or economic dislocation, or both. Planned, scientific destruction of the enemy's resources carried out by both sides during the war has left factories destroyed, fields impoverished and without fertilizer or machinery to get them back in shape, transportation systems wrecked, populations scattered and on the borderline of starvation, and T |