The Secretary General of the United Nations, Mr. Trygve Lie, made public today the text of the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade, concluded by the United States and twentytwo other countries at Geneva, Switzerland, on October 30.

The General Agreement is the most comprehensive international instrument ever negotiated for the reduction of barriers to world trade, having regard both to the scope of its provisions and to the volume of trade which they affect. The provisions of the Agreement extend to trade barriers and trade controls of all kinds, including tariffs, preferences, quotas, internal controls, customs regulations, state trading and subsidies. The twenty-three countries participating in the negotiations were Australia, the BelgiumNetherlands-Luxemburg Customs Union, Brazil, Burma, Canada, Ceylon, Chile, China, Cuba, Czechoslovakia, France, India, the Customs Union of Lebanon and Syria, New Zealand, Norway, Pakistan, Southern Rhodesia, the Union of South Africa, the United Kingdom, and the United States. These countries accounted in 1938 for approximately three-quarters of the international trade of the whole world.

The Agreement consists of 1) Schedules of tariffs concessions, and 2) General Provisions dealing among other things with barriers to trade other than tariffs. Each country applying the Agreement undertakes to grant to the other parties to the Agreement the reductions or bindings of tariff treatment specified in the Schedules of tariff concessions, and to observe the rules laid down in the General Provisions in its commercial relations with them.

The Schedules of tariff concessions apply to products accounting for approximately two-thirds of the import trade of the negotiating countries and for substantially half of total world imports. The concessions include the complete elimination of certain duties, reductions of duty, the binding of duties at existing levels, and the binding of dutyfree treatment.

Tariff preferences affecting a significant part of United States trade with countries in the British Commonwealth have been substantially reduced and preferences on a considerable list of products which the United States exports to the various countries of the Commonwealth have been eliminated entirely. Under the terms of the Agreement, no new preference may be created and no existing preference may be increased, whether or not on products listed in the Schedules of the Agreement.

All concessions made by the United States were formulated within the limits and according to the procedures specified by the Trade Agreements Act and Executive Order No. 9832 of February 25, 1947. As required by the Executive

Order, the General Agreement provides that if, through unforeseen developments, a particular tariff reduction should increase imports so sharply as to cause or threaten serious injury to domestic producers, the country granting the concession may withdraw or modify it in whole or in part. If the concession is in fact modified or withdrawn, other interested countries may then withdraw or modify substantially equivalent concessions.

The General Agreement will replace the Reciprocal Trade Agreements which the United States already has with a number of the negotiating countries, namely, BelgiumLuxemburg, Canada, Cuba, France, the Netherlands, and the United Kingdom. Supplementary bilateral agreements have therefore been concluded with these countries making the existing trade agreements inoperative for such time as the United States and the other country concerned are both parties to the General Agreement.

The negotiations with respect to tariff concessions were conducted on a selective, product-by-product basis, the concession granted by any country on a particular product being negotiated initially in discussions with the country which was a principal supplier of that product.

Under the terms of the Agreement, each party to the Agreement will be contractually entitled, in its own right and independently of the most-favored-nation clause, to enjoy each of the concessions in the Schedules of the other negotiating countries. This multilateral application of the Schedules, as compared with separate bilateral tariff agreements, enables countries to obtain concessions on products of interest to them which they could not have obtained under bilateral agreements because they could not claim to be one of the main suppliers of the product concerned. Appropriate provision is made in the Agreement permitting the non-application of particular tariff concessions in the event that the country which stands to benefit from them most fails to apply the Agreement or withdraws from the Agreement.

The General Provisions of the Agreement, incorporating basic rules with regard to nondiscrimination, internal charges and restrictions, quotas and exchange controls, and other measures, are not limited to scheduled items but cover the whole of the trade between the parties to the Agreement. These provisions establish for the first time a generally accepted international code of fair treatment in commercial relations.

The Agreement and its Schedules of tariff concessions will be put into effect provisionally on January 1, 1948 by Australia, the Belgium-Netherlands-Luxemburg Customs Union, Canada, France, the United Kingdom, and the United States,

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and by other participating countries as soon as they can comply with procedures required by their constitutions or laws. This must be done by June 30, 1948. Provisional application by the United States will be effected by Presidential proclamation under the Trade Agreements Act, as amended. The Agreement will enter definitively into force upon deposit with the Secretary General of the United Nations of formal acceptances on behalf of countries making up 85 percent of the foreign trade of all negotiating countries as determined in an annex to the Agreement.

Two years of intensive preparation, both here and abroad, including six months of continuous international negotiations at Geneva, went into the formulation of the Agreement. The negotiating conference held some 1,000 formal meetings, and many more of a less formal character, on the tariff negotiations and related general provisions. Over 100 negotiations between separate pairs of negotiating countries went into the formulation of the final Schedules of concessions.

From every point of view, the Agreement is unprecedented in scope and importance in the history of international trade, It is a demonstration of the kind of constructive work that the United Nations can do in the economic field. The Agreement is the first major step to be taken by important nations to reverse the trend toward trade restriction and economic isolation which has persisted throughout the world since the first world war. It establishes liberal commercial policies for all of the leading trading nations. Announcement of this Agreement should create an auspicious atmosphere for the opening of the United Nations Conference on Trade and Employment scheduled for Habana on November 21, and, within the long-term framework which it establishes, it should be possible for the reconstruction of Europe under the Marshall Plan to proceed with more confidence that efforts to restore world economy will not again be defeated by commercial warfare between the great trading powers.

This analysis sets forth the main points of the Agreement and its tariff schedules and describes the principal improvements in trading conditions which the Agreement brings about for the United States and the world.