CALL FOR VETO

Gisborne Herald, Volume LXXIV, Issue 22340, 27 May 1947, Page 5

CALL FOR VETO

U.S. WOOL BILL PRICE RISE EFFECT UNDULY HIGH PRIVILEGES (11.30 a.m.) NEW YORK. May 26. The Baltimore Sun, in an editorial on the wool bill, which was passed by the House of Representatives on Friday, says: “The wool tariff vote in the House was a synical grab which the President or Congress, after reflection, will be expected to slap down. This bill would pick the pockets of American consumers by boosting the price of woollen clothing. “It would yank the rug out from under the American bargainers seeking tariff concessions from other nations at Geneva in the interests of a revived world trade. It would shoot holes. in the country’s economic and foreign policy. “All this is accomplished by the bill, which hangs wool on the hatrack of special privilege high above most other commodities. Many commodities have tariff protection, but this bill would give domestic wool a super tariff over and above the normal extremely high tariff of 34 cents a pound. “The present laws provide import fees and import quotas on crops like foreign cotton, but the American market is not as important to the foreign cotton people as to the foreign wool people. That is because America raises more than enough cotton for her own needs, but less than enough wool. “To sum up, the House Wool Bill is a screaming example of that kind of economic gouge which its farm and State backers howl at most eloquently when business or Labour . groups seek to perpetrate them. It is a squeeze which Congress must reconsider- in conference, or failing that, the President must veto the bill.”