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Statement by the President on the Differential in Cotton Costs Between Domestic and Foreign Textile Producers.

September 06, 1962

ON May 2, 1961, I announced a seven-point program designed to meet a wide range of problems facing the textile and apparel industry and its more than 2 million employees.1 The fourth of these seven measures directed the Department of Agriculture to explore and make recommendations to eliminate or offset the adverse differential in raw cotton costs between domestic and foreign textile producers.

1 See 1961 volume, this series, Item 161.

Pursuant to a recommendation of the Secretary of Agriculture, I requested the Tariff Commission to make an immediate investigation under Section 22 of the Agricultural Adjustment Act. The Commission has now made its report.

The Commission rejected the Department's recommendation for an import fee of 81/2 cents a pound on the cotton content of textile imports to offset the difference between the cost of raw cotton to foreign mills and that which our mills are required by law to pay.

Thus, the inequity of the two-price system of cotton costs remains as a unique burden upon the American textile industry, for which a solution must be found in the near future.

I am therefore requesting the Department of Agriculture to give immediate attention to the formulation of a domestic program that would eliminate this inequity. I am also instructing all other departments and offices of the Executive Branch to cooperate fully to this end. Such a program will undoubtedly require enabling legislation.

Accordingly, between now and the next session of Congress, representatives of this Administration will confer with appropriate Congressional leaders and with spokesmen for all interested segments of the cotton industry, including various producer organizations and the textile mills. Based upon the results of these conferences and the recommendations of the Department of Agriculture, early in the next session of Congress I shall recommend legislation designed to remove the inequity created by the present two-price cotton system.

John F. Kennedy, Statement by the President on the Differential in Cotton Costs Between Domestic and Foreign Textile Producers. Online by Gerhard Peters and John T. Woolley, The American Presidency Project https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/node/236753

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