Revise the tariff downward through reciprocal trade agreements

What we must do is this: revise our tariff on the basis of a reciprocal exchange of goods, allowing other Nations to buy and to pay for our goods by sending us such of their goods as will not seriously throw any of our industries out of balance

The task of statesmanship is to determine what these products are, to bring about bilateral or group international agreements to effectuate their exchange.

Also attacks Hawley-Smoot as "a drastic revision of the tariff upward" whose increases "were political favors".

We advocate a competitive tariff for revenue with a fact-finding tariff commission free from executive interference, reciprocal tariff agreements with other nations

I accept that admirable tariff statement in the platform of this convention. It would protect American business and American labor. By our acts of the past we have invited and received the retaliation of other Nations. I propose an invitation to them to forget the past, to sit at the table with us, as friends, and to plan with us for the restoration of the trade of the world.

Tariffs should be high enough to maintain living standards which we set for ourselves. But if they are higher, they become a particularly vicious kind of direct tax which is laid doubly on the consumer.

Protective qualifier: the July 30 formulation concedes tariffs high enough to protect American living standards.

Trade barriers of all kinds ought to be lowered, not by rule of thumb, but with due regard to safety and justice -- lowered, nevertheless, as quickly and definitely as possible.

The Democratic tariff policy consists, in large measure, of negotiating agreements with individual countries permitting them to sell goods to us in return for which they will let us sell to them goods and crops which we produce.

If I am any judge of conditions in this country today and of thought in this country today, that policy will be initiated on March 4, 1933.

Policy = 'tariff by negotiation ... on a basis of fair barter'.

This principle of tariff by negotiation means to deal with each country concerned, on a basis of fair barter; if it has something we need, and we have something it needs, a tariff agreement can and should be made that is satisfactory to both countries.

Of course the outrageously excessive rates in that bill as it became law, must come down. But we should not lower them beyond a reasonable point, a point indicated by common sense and facts.

We must consent to the reduction to some extent of some of our duties in order to secure a lowering of foreign tariff walls over which a larger measure of our surplus may be sent.

We shall try to discover with each country in turn the things which can be exchanged with mutual benefit and shall seek to further this exchange to the best of our ability. This economic interchange is the most important item in any country's foreign policy.

I know of no effective excessively high tariff duties on farm products. I do not intend that such duties shall be lowered. To do so would be inconsistent with my entire farm program, and every farmer in the United States knows it and will not be deceived.

Explicit limit: no reduction of agricultural duties.

The point indicated was that no tariff duty should be lowered to a point where our natural industries would be injured.

The 1934 act embodied the negotiated-reciprocity approach of the campaign.

In 1934, FDR won passage of the Reciprocal Trade Agreements Act, which allowed him to grant "most favored nation" trade status to countries with which the United States worked out trade agreements.

Roosevelt and his party intend to reduce the farm tariffs and open the home market to peasant-labor products.

This is surely a promise of reducing farm tariffs. They will reduce farm tariffs if they come to power.

Roosevelt's Baltimore statement that he would not cut farm tariffs is a startling last-minute reversal that rewrites the Democratic platform.

He now announces within 2 weeks of the election that he does not propose to reduce tariffs on farm products.