The President's News Conference

TARIFF COMMISSION APPOINTMENTS

THE PRESIDENT. You seem to have surmised fairly well the situation on the Tariff Commission already.

In addition to former Ambassador [Henry P.] Fletcher and Mr. [Thomas Walker] Page, I have appointed Mr. John Lee Coulter, who was the Chief Economist on the Commission, and I have reappointed Mr. [Edgar B.] Brossard, who is the present Chairman, and Mr. [Alfred P.] Dennis, who is the Vice Chairman, because their inclusion in the new Commission assures the benefit of their experience and the continuity of the investigations which have been underway since the adjournment of Congress on new schedules.

I have not included the sixth man as yet, as I had a failure by way of a declination, and it will be another 10 days or 2 weeks before I will fill the whole Commission out.

FOREIGN TRADE

I have just had from the Department of Commerce the preliminary figures on foreign trade for the month of August. They show total imports of about $217 million and total exports of about $300 million. The exports show an increase of about $38 million over July and imports about the same.

The Department has made a study as to how far imports and exports have been affected by the fall in prices as distinguished from dollar values. Normally, figures, as you know, have been in dollars, and there has been a great fall in prices both in imports and exports. During the first 7 months of this year our exports have decreased about 20 percent in quantity and our imports have decreased about 5 percent, indicating that our buying power has held up much better than buying power abroad. On a quantity basis it appears that--I am taking the last 3 months as a basis--our foreign trade is somewhere between an 80 and 85 percent basis.

Other than that I have no news for today.