368 
AGRICULTURAL RELIEF 
Jose its force and its proper place. But if it is conservatively used 
it is available. i 
Mr. Aswrrn. Since the debentures take half of the tariff, how 
could it be used ? 
Mr. Stewart. It could go to the entire amount of the tariff, for 
that matter, as I see it. 
Mr. AswerL. Under your bill you make it 50 per cent. 
Mr. Stewart. Do not hold me responsible for the bill, you under- 
stand. These are suggestions. 
Mr. Aswerr. Under this bill how could it be abused ¢ 
Mr. Stewart. I beg pardon, 
Mr. Aswerr. I say, under this bill how could it be abused? 
Mr. Stewart. I think there is no possibility of abuse under the 
50 per cent restriction. Certainly there is no intention to abuse the 
resources that are available under the arrangement. 
Some of you have inquired as to why the debenture plan seems 
to have taken the long way around. Why not simply pay by 
appropriation of cash out of the United States Treasury in the sum 
of these bounties? In the first place, that practice would have two 
or three objectionable features. It would mean that instead of hav- 
ing a fairly conservative stopping point automatically fixed by the 
productiveness of the tariff revenues, you would have a practically 
wide-open field, and instead of having 1t stop at $600,000,000, so long 
as established duties produce $600,000,000, there would be nothing 
in particular to prevent it running on to a billion or two billion 
dollars. 
On the other hand, there is a more important reason than that. 
It you make it a matter of cash or appropriation bounty, you run 
into a higher probability of retaliation on the part of other coun- 
tries. 
The export debenture is an application of the principle of remitted 
duties. It is a matter of establishing conditions under which goods 
may be brought in in such a way that there is a remission of taxes. 
There is nothing startling involved if you remit taxes that are 
being levied upon products coming into the United States, in order 
to allow more ease of egress of products going out of the United 
States. That corresponds in its essential character to what might 
be accomplished if the country should choose to reduce duties. A 
reduction of duty would tend to make easier the round-trip rela- 
tionship which all economic science teaches is involved in foreign 
trade. Foreign trade rests upon exchange of goods for goods. 
Here is an arrangement whereby agricultural exports can be given 
a higher value in exchange for dutiable goods with the tariff in effect 
and without impairment of established duties. 
It is to be conceded that it is within the right of any country to 
modify the ease with which its goods can be exchanged for the goods 
of another country, so far as it is done by reference to import duties. 
On the other hand, most of the countries on the globe have anti- 
dumping laws. Under those antidumping laws retaliation can be 
undertaken in the case of a cash or appropriation bounty being paid 
by the Government of any other country. The United States, Great 
Britain. and one other country, the name of which does not come 
right now, are the only three countries. according to a report laid