Henry Wallace strode into the green-carpeted House Ways & Means Committee room to take up the cudgels again in an old, familiar fight: for reciprocal trade agreements. But this time, with the nations gathered at San Francisco, the old bickerings had a new implication. The committee was considering the bill to renew the eleven-year-old Reciprocal Trade Agreements Law and to permit further tariff reductions.
Henry Wallace warned that a return to the high-tariff policies of the 19203 and 19303 would "indicate to the world that the U.S. had gone isolationist." Solemnly he said that, if the law were allowed...