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THE BRITISH COMMONWEALTH OF NATIONS
                     UNITED KINGDOM
 PRELIMINARY DISCUSSIONS RESPECTING A TRADE AGREEMENT
   BETWEEN THE UNITED STATES AND THE UNITED KINGDOM'
01.4231/47
         The Department of State to the British Enbaejy
  The Government of the United States assumes that the Govern-
ment of Great Britain concurs fully with its view that economic re-
covery and those conditions of peace of which the world is so sadly
in need cannot be achieved, and disaster averted, unless something
more effective is done to reduce excessive barriers to international
trade and to arrest and limit the increase in armaments.
  Definite progress, despite many impediments, has been made in
carrying forward a comprehensive and broad program undertaking
to restore normal international trade relationships and thus secure
peace and economic well-being. It has been confidently hoped that the
Government of Great Britain would display a major interest in the
prosecution of this broad program and that much of the great influ-
ence of the British Government and of the British Dominions would
be exerted in support of this movement.
  It is in these circumstances that the Government of the United
States is regretfully forced to the conclusion that recent evidences
of the commercial policy pursued by the British and Canadian Gov-
ernments, culminating in a reported pending trade agreement between
those two Governments,2 raises the question of whether the cumula-
tive effect of such policy is not to obstruct and impede the broad pro-
gram for economic disarmament that is underway and that is being
carried forward with such effort by a number of the nations of the
world. This unfortunate impression of obstruction comes likewise at
a time when the forces of extreme economic nationalism, as well as of
extreme nationalism of other characters, are in a position where they
may further handicap and delay the efforts of the Government of the
United States and of other powers in support of this movement.
C Continued from Foreign Relations, 1936, vol. I, pp. 629-706.
2British Cmd. 5382: Trade Agreement between His Majesty's Government in
the United Kingdom and His Majesty's Government in Canada, Ottawa, February
28, 1987.
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