Page:Bearing and Importance of Commercial Treaties in the Twentieth Century, 1906.djvu/21

 "These considerations make American reciprocity negotiations unusually difficult, but by no means impossible." He does not examine the difficulties of application. At the same time, he seems to foreshadow some attempt at change in the United States tariff policy when he writes: "If Congress were to establish a scale of maximum duties by a horizontal increase of the present rates, to the extent of, say, 20 per cent., such maximum tariff could be applied to those countries which wilfully discriminate against the United States, while the regular tariff could be applied to all other countries, and, at the same time, be used, as occasion should arise as the basis of special reductions of duty through the medium of reciprocity." The three countries which discriminate at present against the United States are France, Spain and Switzerland.

This is very significant, meaning apparently that in United States Government circles there is a leaning to the French system of a double tariff.

Now, this very French system was provoked into existence, so to speak, by the United States Tariff of 1890. Under the regime of M. Meline, the organizer of protection in France, the new general tariff, a very high, almost prohibitive, one, was to be applied wherever not reduced by treaty. The conventional one is composed of the minimum duties which have been granted to any nation; it applies to all who have the benefit of the most-favoured nation treatment. I may mention that the differences between the general and the minimum tariff range from about 50 to 70 per cent. The coercion of the United States was in the first instance the motive of the French tariff reformers. Now, the Americans are likely to adopt the same method against France. The method it is seen seems very far from smoothing the way to reductions of tariff! This brings us, in fact, to retaliation as a method generally.