U.S. Foreign Aid Under Discussion

Press, Volume XCV, Issue 28262, 27 April 1957, Page 2

U.S. Foreign Aid Under Discussion

[By THOMAS J. MARSHALL)

WASHINGTON—MutuaI aid is now be discussed by Congressional committees and this is a good time for taking a look at its prospects.

At this moment, Congress would seen more interested in cutting down from the 4400 million dollars proposed in the President’s budget, than in reorganising the programme. And it should be said that the administration itself is seeking savings. But it is evidently thinking in terms of minor cuts and not in terms of anywhere near as sizable a deduction as proposed in some Congressional quarters. More important, however, is this—indications of a reassessment of the programme appeared this week in testimony before the Foreign Affairs Committee of the House of Representatives. The witness was Mr T. V. Kalijarvi, Assistant Secretary of State for Economic Affairs and thus a highly official spokesman for the administration.

As the United States has made use of almost every conceivable form of assistance Jo other countries, Mr Kalijarvi naturally could not offer startling innovations. But his pronounced emphasis on the economic part of the aid programme is as noteworthy as his tying together of foreign aid with liberal trade policies and other means of economic co-operation in one package of foreign policy. The assumption has always been that no contraction is contemplated on the military side of the mutual assistance programme. There might be shifts effecting savings—such as the decision to supply Great Britain with missile bodies. But otherwise, there has been nothing to indicate major changes. In fact, the incipient Congressional debate has largely been concerned with economic assistance. It is on this part of aid specifically that Mr Kalijarvi has expressed the State Department’s current thinking. It justifies foreign aid by no means only with the political problem of resisting the spread of communism. To the contrary, the State Department’s thesis is that economic growth abroad is by itself of enduring interest to the United States. “Encouraging Enterprise” Thus, the policy is to encourage free, competitive enterprise abroad, not as a mere anti-Com-munist counterweight but as demonstrably the most effective way for increasing the production of goods and services that make for better living. It is to make

available abroad risk capital—public, semi-public and private capital—for new industries. It favours competition as a stimulus for lower prices and hence anti, cartel legislation. And it sees in free labour unions a necessary means for protecting the workers’ rights.

All this is tempered by thp corollary recognition that each country must have the right to develop—outside aid notwithstanding—its very own form of economic organisation. In fact, Mr Kalijarvi declares that “socialist devices” in force abroad—including governmeiit control of basic industries— art not to be considered necessarilyas manifestations of an ideology approaching communism. He puts emphasis on practical matters —public, semi-public and private development capital and technical assistance—rather than on the precise economic ideology of aid-receiving countries, par. ticularly with regard to newly developing lands. These, of course, are large concepts. It would be unrealistic to expect each and every one of them to be incorporated in a new omnibus foreign aid bill. But the views now promoted by the administration are bound to be a stimulating contribution to the discussion in Congress where" foreign aid is now one of the more controversial items on the calendar. (U.S. Information Service).