Remarks to the Members of the Public Advisory Committee on Trade Negotiations.

Governor Herter, ladies and gentlemen:

When Governor Herter explained this meeting to me and asked that we schedule it, he kept assuring me that his party would be small. And I was tempted to tell the Governor that next to seeing him personally, few things would make me happier than to be sure that his party really was small-his Republican Party.

I am sure that all of you appreciate, as I do, that you are privileged to work with one of the most able and respected public men of our times, in the person of Christian Herter. He is setting an inspiring example of unselfish devotion to duty in his present labors, as he has ever since I have known him, and that has been a good many years.

The country is no less in the debt of each of you for your own public spirited participation in this undertaking which is so much in our national interest and which I think is so much in the interest of the free world. As a legislator long before I became a public executive, I am always mindful of the wisdom of a great Englishman's observation, and that observation was that free trade, one of the greatest blessings which a government can confer upon a people, is in almost every country unpopular.

I know, and I think you know, how far we in the United States have come toward a mature and toward a rational understanding of the opportunities which trade presents for the building of the kind of a world that men want. The Trade Expansion Act of 1962 will endure as one of the greatest monuments to President Kennedy's leadership, and how difficult it was to pass that act, and how long and faithful he worked on it. But it will also stand as a milestone to the progress of popular understanding among business and labor and agriculture.

I hope that our friends in other lands will neither underestimate or undervalue the strength of American support for success of the trade negotiations that we have entered. That act 2 years ago was made possible by the kind of unselfish and nonpartisan public support that you are providing again now. We are going to greatly need your advice and your counsel and, most of all, your real help. The negotiations will be lengthy and, of course, they will be complex. They will be difficult at all times. But as we believe the cause is worthy, we know that the gains can be great.

I look forward with a certain amount of prudent optimism to the round of negotiations which the 1962 act, by our Congress, has made possible. Of course, we will need to be patient and persistent. We will need at all times, of course, to be firm. We are willing to offer our free world friends access to American markets, but we expect and we must have access to their markets also. That applies to our agricultural as well as our industrial exports.

The United States will enter into no ultimate agreement unless progress is registered toward trade liberalization on the products of our farms as well as our factories. These negotiations are not the kind in which some nations need lose because others gain. Their success will be to the advantage of all. The opportunity, therefore, is here to build a partnership for progress among the free world industrial nations, and then between them and the developing nations. We mean to fully explore that opportunity, and we mean to fully pursue it.

At home we are moving to eliminate the causes of poverty among all Americans. In the world, we believe that a long step can be taken toward a victory over that poverty everywhere if free nations will only work together for a victory over the obstacles to free trade.

So this morning it is somewhat dampened by the atmosphere, but let me say to each of you, and to Governor Herter in particular, that I express the gratitude of the American people to you for lending your hand to the laying of this most important cornerstone for what we all hope in the days to come will be a much better world, a world where peace endures, and where prosperity is present.

I am sorry that we have inclement weather. I would like to visit with you longer. But I do want you to know from the bottom of my heart that we feel deeply in your debt for the contribution you have made. We look forward with great anticipation to the fruits of your efforts.

Thank you.