undertaken in the past that are just about the same thing as those policies that we tend to complain about when initiated by foreign governments, because you do indicate here it is difficult to argue with one country when half the time we have played the game just about the same way?

Mr. WALDMANN. Well, there are cases where we have made, or there have been proposals discussed, either in Congress, or elsewhere, which would have this effect.

I do not know that any major policies of any agencies have given us that kind of problems, but perhaps Mr. Bank could answer. Mr. RUPPE. Maybe he can cite us a case.

Mr. BANK. One example which comes to mind very quickly were the shipping problems of domestic international sales corporations which gave a tax benefit to shippers which employed U.S.-flag vessels to ship their products abroad. This was a minor benefit, I think an after-tax benefit of 1.5 percent.

Mr. RUPPE. Was it a necessary part of getting under DISC, or was it a plus?

Mr. BANK. It was a plus.

In fact, I believe it was an amendment added on the floor of the Senate when the DISC provisions were passed about 32 or 4 years

ago.

There is a resulting story which comes to mind in the aviation sphere right after this was enacted.

One of our Embassies abroad immediately complained to the Department about complaints it had received from two American air carriers.

That nation which was the host nation offered its own national air carrier, their shippers, shipping certain commodities, 50 percent off the rates if they chose to use their own national carriers, and our carriers came to us and said, "We have a complaint about this. Is it in violation of the Air Agreement?"

When the complaint was raised with the other government they said "You do it in DISC, do you not?" and the answer is, of course, yes, but not as much. We do not go up to 50 percent.

We have the same problems today. I referred a while back to the situation we are having with a country in regard to tax benefits that shippers in that country can or may receive, if they employ their own flag vessels.

This is similar to the DISC provision.

We have had this problem, and have discussed the DISC provision earlier, and that is just one minor example of it.

Mr. RUPPE. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman.

Mr. DOWNING. Madam Chairman?

Mrs. SULLIVAN. Just one question, and I am sorry I was late, but I had two other meetings this morning, and I had to come over here to hear part of yours.

Mr. Waldmann, you have referred to some of the international maritime meetings, and activities in which the State Department participates.

Would you please describe, and if there is not time now, Mr. Chairman, I think he could do this in a reply to me, or for the record but

describe in as much detail as possible the process by which the position of this country at these meetings is formulated, and exactly what level of priority is assigned to our maritime interests.

I ask that mainly because sitting through one of them the year before last, the maritime part of it was pushed aside for the Navy people and some of the other interests.

If you could describe this as best you can I would appreciate it. Mr. WALDMANN. We will be glad to respond to that in more detail, Madam Chairman.

I should say at least in those cases where we have the responsibility, for UNCTAD questions, IMCO questions, OECD questions coming in the maritime committees of those organizations, the State Department convenes an interagency group, or uses the shipping coordinating committee. All industry representatives, union representatives and agencies of Government, including your committee, and the Senate Commerce Committee are invited to attend, and to participate, and that process, in general, has been used for all the cases that I am aware of.

Now, I do not know the event that you are referring to, and may have involved something our office was not directly responsible for. Mrs. SULLIVAN. Is the position of our country really formulated at these meetings when all of these interested groups are combined, or at what level?

Mr. WALDMANN. Well, we can detail for you the preparations in some specific cases.

Certainly, for all IMCO and UNCTAD exercises position papers are prepared, which form the basis for the U.S. spokesman's activity, whether from the State Department, or any other agency.

Many of these delegations are led by people from other agencies, and those position papers are developed through a process of using the representatives of other agencies at these meetings, or in direct comment to the Department.

The final approval of those position papers is a responsibility of the Secretary of State.

He does delegate to my office, or to offices within the Department, the primary responsibility of preparing those papers, and for that purpose, we are working in coordination with other agencies.

Mrs. SULLIVAN. Consider the fact that in many of these international meetings we have had representation of staff, as well as members, to observe, but have had very little input.

Now, where is this decision made?

In many of these meetings we have little authority to state our opposition, or any other position. We just simply observe what is going

on.

Who is selected to be the one who really has this input from the various interested groups?

Mr. WALDMANN. Madam Chairman, I am not familiar with any case in the last 2 years when I have been involved in these multilateral activities where representatives of the committee have not been present in the preparation for these meetings, where members of the committee were not invited to participate, not only in the preparation, but in the actual meeting or negotiations.

I recall one case very recently, the Maritime Satellite Conference, where several members of the committee and staff participated, not only in the Washington meetings, but also at the meetings in London. Madam Chairman, they were very helpful, but I am not aware of any problem during those preparations or, in fact, in any other preparations where members of the committee or the staff did not have an impact on the development of both positions and the emerging negotiations.

In fact, I think we had a representative of this committee and the Senate Commerce Committee in Geneva for both or all of the sessions of the UNCTAD Code of Conduct negotiations and certainly, in the advance preparation of the positions in Washington.

Mrs. SULLIVAN. Well, on the ones that were held overseas were members and staff sitting at the same table describing their side of it and trying to make input into those discussions?

Mr. WALDMANN. Yes, ma'am.

In fact, it has been my practice in the delegations I have led, and I think this is followed by other officers in the areas I am responsible for, to have open delegation meetings, and open meetings in Washington in advance to make sure that those views are heard, and that there is, to the extent possible, a consensus developed by the delegation on any position.

This is not always possible, of course, but I think even in the case of the code, the views of the committee were not at variance from those of the other agencies involved.

When faced with the realities of what the UNCTAD was developed for, there was no disagreement among the members of the delegation, the committee and staff, with respect to a final vote on that code. Mrs. SULLIVAN. Any that are sent over as delgeates have this permission to sit in and offer discussion?

Mr. WALDMANN. That is correct.

Mrs. SULLIVAN. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Mr. DOWNING. Mr. McCloskey?

Mr. MCCLOSKEY. I have one question, and it calls for a yes or no

answer.

With regard to this coordination between the State Department, Treasury and Commerce for the expansion of international trade and our program back in 1971, Secretary of the Treasury Phelps made out a plan which contemplated that there would be a unit which represented the flow of oil from the Mideast to this country.

When did you first have any inkling that there might be danger of an embargo that might affect U.S. shipping?

Can you give me a date?

Mr. WALDMANN. I do not know what the date was.

Mr. MCCLOSKEY. Before the embargo, did you ever have any intelligence that there was a possibility of an embargo that might throw this whole Treasury plan out?

Mr. WALDMANN. I did not have the intelligence, but that does not mean that others in the Department did not have it.

Mr. MCCLOSKEY. Did the State Department ever have any knowledge of a potential embargo when the Government was relying on that plan in 1971, 1972, and 1973?

Mr. WALDMANN. I cannot answer the question.

Mr. MCCLOSKEY. Do you know whether State ever communicated to Treasury, or any other agency of Government that there was the possibility of an embargo?

Mr. WALDMANN. I do not know whether they have or not, sir, or did at that time.

Mr. MCCLOSKEY. Our difficulty, Mr. Secretary, is to formulate a maritime policy not based on false premises that apparently existed in that report in 1971.

Do you have any suggestion as to how the Congress might be apprised of that kind of misapprehension?

Mr. WALDMANN. I am not sure how one can anticipate all of these things which might affect the maritime program.

Clearly, the embargo has had an effect.

The increase in oil prices has had an effect, and the flow of petroleum around the world has had an effect, but to what degree that was predictable, or foreseeable at that point is a very difficult question to answer, even in specifics, much less the abstract.

Mr. MCCLOSKEY. The fact of it is that the State Department, prior to the embargo, had no contingency plan.

Mr. WALDMANN. I do not know that. Perhaps my boss. Mr. Enders, or the Secretary could answer that question much better than I.

Let me again explain, there is at my level another Deputy Assistant Secretary with primary responsibility for petroleum and commodities, and he may be a better witness for that question.

Mr. MCCLOSKEY. He did not volunteer to come down.

Mr. WALDMANN. He may have felt we were not going to get into this. Mr. MCCLOSKEY. Thank you.

Mr. DOWNING. Mr. Oberstar?

Mr. OBERSTAR. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

I would like to come back for a moment to your testimony on page 5 about the Soviet merchant fleet, and ask your information on competition from the Russians.

What information can you provide as to the nature and extent of the Russian competition, the number of ships that are trading in relationship between east coast and west coast, and what percent of U.S. trade are they carrying by weight, whether bulk or tanker.

Mr. WALDMANN. Congressman, we do not have that kind of data. I believe this is the kind of information which the Maritime Administration routinely collects and prepares, and would probably be a better source for that.

May I say that we are aware in a general way of the substantial significant increases in Soviet activity.

We cannot give you the facts and figures.

Mr. OBERSTAR, You must have that information somewhere, because that would be an important consideration of making policy decision; would it not?

Mr. WALDMANN. If you would like us to supply for the record the data that we have about Soviet activities, I will be glad to do so, but it will not be primarily State Department produced information.

On the other hand, there are secondary sources which we could use to provide the committee with whatever information they want.

Mr. OBERSTAR. Is that Soviet trade, or their portion of the United States trade, commensurate with the United States share of Soviet merchant trade?

Mr. WALDMANN. I am sorry, but I did not fully understand the question.

Mr. OBERSTAR. Are they getting as much of our business as we are getting of theirs?

Mr. WALDMANN. I would prefer to give you facts and figures to the extent we have them without assessing that.

Under the grain deal, up until quite recently, they were carrying a greater proportion of the cargo, but this has now changed.

Mr. OBERSTAR. Thank you very much.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Mr. DOWNING. One final question. The Inter-Agency Committee on the Tanker Problem, has that committee come to any resolution as to the problem?

Mr. WALDMANN. Not that I am aware of

The committee has met, or had met several times in the last few months.

I am not aware of any meeting in the last month and a half or 2 months.

Mr. DOWNING. They have not dropped the subject, have they?

Mr. WALDMANN. I believe the subject is still under active consideration. There is no question about that.

I know it has not reached a conclusion at this point.

Mr. DOWNING. Do you have any time limit on it?

Mr. WALDMANN. I do not.

Mr. DOWNING. Mr. Emery and Mr. McCloskey of the committee would like to submit some questions for inclusion in the record at this point, and the record will remain open for those questions.

[The following was submitted:]

U.S. HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES, COMMITTEE ON MERCHANT MARINE AND FISHERIES, Washington, D.C., June 23, 1975.

Hon. RAYMOND J. WALDMANN, Deputy Assistant Secretary for Transportation and Telecommunications, Department of State, Washington, D.C.

DEAR MR. WALDMANN: Although we found your testimony before the Subcommittee very useful and especially appreciate the fact that you demonstrated an interest in the oversight hearings by asking to testify, we would like to have more specific information on a variety of subjects. Since both of us asked you to provide answers to a number of questions at the hearing, we are writing a joint letter to avoid duplication and to clarify our questions. Your response to these questions will be made a part of the record.

1. Would you provide the Subcommittee with the minutes and working documents of the President's Inter-Agency Committee for Export Expansion?

2. What specific steps has the State Department taken in the last two years to increase the foreign trade of the United States?

3. Why does the State Department object to having a commercial attache from the Department of Commerce in U.S. Embasies?

4. Would you submit a list containing a description of each of the alternatives considered by the Inter-Agency Task Force on Tanker Problems? Would you also provide legal opinion indicating which alternatives could be taken under existing law and which would require additional legislation?

5. Would you provide any current State Department documents which define and explain the Department's shipping policies and objectives? Is the present merchant fleet adequate to fulfill those objectives in the areas of national security