Conversation 630-003

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Come in, boys.

Before I sit down, I'd like to give you some good news.

What else would lead you now, sir?

This morning.

Let's get in the car together.

No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no.

I just want to just come up with a hard way, you know, born in Mexico, very rough and poor family in California, work your way up, and when she's out there talking, you know, in Spain, and get scholarships for other programs and industries, and then be operated in the United States.

It's a great story.

It's a fine one.

And she's a fine woman.

She sure is a fine woman.

You could just tell when you met her, remember when she came in that day, she was very, you know, overwhelmed and big.

The president's office is so large.

Most, I guess.

But she and her husband just seem to like such fine people.

It's going to be a real pleasure to work with her.

She'll be over there.

She participates in your staff, you know, and everything, just like your wife.

We have one every Friday morning, and in addition, I suspect your men are in this.

But in addition, I see them quite often at other times on paper problems.

But I think she'll be a great experience for her, and she's going to make a real contribution.

Good, good, good.

What I thought we would talk about is to

Let me see if I can get her on the phone.

Would you like to stand by those, please?

Well, on the...

If you want to wait until you talk to Kurt about it.

Yeah, okay.

On the...

I think we ought to discuss that.

Sometimes.

General speaking, I think there's a disposition on the part of most of the countries and a group of ten to get back to fix these changes.

But to put it, I suppose, as succinctly as I can, the United States has, for 22 years, been running a dice in our balance of payments.

This intervenes at other days, and all the others in the room have been running short buses, basically at our expense.

Now, I should go over your actions and what you've said with respect to realignment of currency, trade, and conversion.

But they're being asked to equalize the time.

And that simply means that they have to give up something.

And it's not easy.

Now, everybody assumes that our principal problem is their relationship with us.

But the truth of the matter is that our people's concern, perhaps even more of a concern, is the interrelationship among themselves.

And it could be a classic example.

Germany values their trade relations with the United States.

And obviously, the relative value of the D mark, the German mark, to the dollar is important.

But on the other hand, when you look at it quite lightly,

They do quite as much trade with the blacks as they do with the United States.

And the DMARC's relationship to the French flag is therefore far more critical to them than the DMARC's relationship to the dollar.

Now the same is true of the pound sterling of the United Kingdom, of the Italian Libero, and so forth.

So they're in a relationship.

And the European community, frankly, is more difficult for them than their relationship and their problems with us.

Now, our problems with the Japanese, I think we can solve those fairly readily on trade and on real-life currencies.

But before they're agreeably doing that,

They want to know where the D-Mark is going to be.

They want too great a disparity to exist in the world markets between the D and the D-Mark.

So that every one of these are interrelated.

This is why we, this is why we have a real problem.

When you get, when you get 11 countries, we call it group 10 from Switzerland, there's actually 11, when you get us all around the table, and everybody's trying to protect their national interest,

It's all difficult, Mr. President, to get them to lay their last cards on the table.

They don't want to ultimately divulge their final decision.

Well, I would say part of the reason for that is the public's making an overstatement.

You said everybody there for the purpose of clearing their national interests.

until we face the crunch and at the boot we protect our national interest.

It's like everybody there about the United States there to protect their national interest.

That's why I more or less assumed that the United States did not have to.

We could afford, and frankly, thank God we could in times past, we could afford the luxury of being very generous in all these matters, and now we can't.

That's exactly correct, but this is not what's happening, Mr. President.

Under your instruction...

I assure you that we have not foreclosed a single possibility of action to you.

Now, notwithstanding these stories about the price of gold and so forth, I assure you that in these discussions, we assume certain things.

But at no point did any member of the delegation, there were only Dr. Arthur Byrne, Paul Wolf, who is the Secretary of the Treasury, and myself.

Only three of us were in these sessions.

And I, the Secretary of the Treasury,

that I had no authority to change the price of gold.

That position was ultimately a decision that had been made, as far as I was concerned, by you.

And I had no indication that your position was changed.

And as a matter of fact, that you didn't have the power to give the land under the same name in the face of the Congress.

We made all that very clear to them.

And, uh, but we were, we were, we were .

That's the interesting thing.

In spite of the fact that we, operating again under your instructions to try to protect the United States, we were the most outgoing nation representing the United States.

We pushed to proceed.

We tried to reach a settlement.

There's no doubt about that.

Now, and this was even more true on the trade ends.

And I think

I really can't overemphasize my disappointment when we first got there, because it's obvious that most of the countries had not seriously considered this trading matter.

And frankly, we're not prepared to talk about it.

They were going to continue to discriminate against American commodities just as you had anticipated that they might.

So we spent the first four hours of the discussion in a very determined, heated discussion to insist

as you asked us to insist, that training commanders be a part of this overall package.

And we finally came to it.

They finally agreed to it.

But in the absence of your determined insistence that this be done, frankly, it wouldn't have been done.

But now it's open.

It's open now.

And Ambassador Bill Ehrlich is going to go to Italy tomorrow.

He's going back tomorrow and start negotiations with the European community on some very critical issues that could be of extreme importance to the United States.

But they're tough now.

I must say to you, you know, I've been there for us.

I must say, it's a failure for some of the colleagues.

We're sitting here as one nation.

with all of the others.

They do have a common position against us.

And so one of them will speak and the other speaks.

And we try to fend off one after the other all day long, hour after hour.

We do have to be a little bit firm.

We have to be a little bit firm.

Hello?

Uh, the Secretary of the Treasury visited my office and told me the good news that you were confirmed unanimously.

And we're delighted that after your long waiting period, you are now the Treasurer of the United States of America.

And we know that the position is in good hands.

And particularly as a Californian, I just want to congratulate you to see that one of our folks made it.

Have you heard from Senator Donovan since you got confirmed?

Well, he's sitting here.

I'll let him call you, too.

There he is.

Congratulations to you.

I think that's wonderful.

We'll look forward to having you aboard over the Turner and look forward to working with you.

We couldn't be happier.

Thank you so much.

I've got a position paper I'll give now.

We started out with these negotiations, as I told you the other day, talking about a multilateral and multinational solution.

Now we get right up to the starting point.

And then he said, well, we don't want to be part of that.

We don't want to be nice and subtle.

We want to continue to float.

But all this time, they've been cooperating with Europe and the UK.

They've given us no help on issues about which they care nothing.

But now they say,

Well, leave us out.

We're going to proceed on our own.

Well, since they represent, on a weighted average, 36% of foreign trade in the United States, when you leave them out, this is a viable effect of what kind of a realignment we're going to have.

Now, we can deal with them on a viable basis, all right.

But if we do, then we ought to insist that when we go back into these group attempts,

that they help us on things like convertibility and rule of crisis or something.

Even if they just speak up and say, well, we couldn't care less about those.

We think that's a phony issue.

But they can help our party and the European community, honestly, if they would.

But up to now, they've done nothing.

They just sit there.

They sit there for the hour.

And the Japanese the same way.

Do we have any friends here?

Well, they all think they're, we're gonna take advantage of them.

Now, the Japanese in France, I guess they said their meat was like a stench.

And finally, on the Saturday, they spoke up for about a minute.

But the Canadians, they just keep us out of the tub, because if we get

We've got to change all our things.

Our complete approach is primary public relations approach, but we can't get rid of 11% real life.

No way.

That would help us not at all if the Canadians are not in.

We'd have to have the Japanese.

We'd have to revalue it 40% for us to get the power to realign.

If the Canadians are out, so we'll have to build a completely different structure if we leave the Canadians out and deal with them on a bilateral basis.

But this is explained here.

It's about $3 billion.

Well, you have, of course, you have an email address.

Well, we've got some trade matters to say about this.

We've got some trade matters here, but this is only three cases.

And, uh, it, uh, it can be awkward for you.

If you want to be able to come about it on a basis, you're certainly in a position to do so.

Uh, that's what we need to do.

But they don't deal on the automotive agreement.

You say, and I think I quite understand you, you say that you're going to deal with it on a bilateral basis, or in a position to do so.

Well, here's what we want to say to him.

We are not prepared to say that.

Not unless he's prepared to give you everything you want.

I think your position could well be with him today.

We thought we were talking about a multilateral settlement.

We thought that's what you were interested in.

Now, if you're not going to be interested in working on a common solution with Japan and with the European community, if you want to work on a bilateral basis with Canada and the United States, well, then we're going to have to approach this problem, as far as the other nations concerned, with a completely different attitude.

And if you say that's what you want,

We'll have to talk about trade issues.

We'll have to talk about your floating.

With you, we can do it on that basis.

But it's going to, in effect, change the rules of the game.

Because we've been proceeding now for three months on the assumption that we were going to have a multilateral solution to the problem.

And to say that if you're not going to go back to 60 cents,

If you want to continue to float, and yet we're going to be forced to go back to fixed exchange rates, then we're going to have to have an agreement out of you that you will have a clean float until you reach a certain period or a certain point.

Let me explain.

The Canadian dollar and the U.S. dollar are now roughly on par.

They're roughly 99 Canadian dollars to the one American dollar.

It's all one for one.

Now, they ought to rebound by probably 6% at least.

So what they've got to do, and the least we ought to ask of them is, if they, if we permit it to float, that they have a clean float until they reach 100 miles.

I don't know what the Secretary of Defense is, but you seem to speak about you now.

The, uh, the, uh, there's an article that I'm interested in.

You can't tell me anything, but it's very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very,

The money must be sent to the development project.

Yeah.

When they come and move it out, they'll go over the places for development.

Aha.

Good.

So they move it in there, but there's no legal basis for dispersing the monitor.

So they didn't do it in any critical way.

They just sent the legal basis for development, and it disappeared.

No.

Can't do it this way for a fourth.

That helicopter didn't count.

No.

That was the only one.

Well, it let it shut down in action.

Yeah.

All right.

I won't raise my problem then.

I won't give that direction.

That's for you.

That's for the respective part of the chair and the mayor.

I'm going to be on a diet.

That's the deal.

All right.

I've been told the last time I've been told the Deputy Foreign Minister of the Netherlands, John, he said, thank God for Conley, who for the first time told us every step he was making.

It's all right.

We'll be there.

And he's now going to be like, I'm serious.

He said it'd be, it'd be the main thing we've got to get.

I asked him to do this, uh,

I got to know John White to say to this son of a bitch, Trudeau, where we're going to leave.

I don't know which way to leave from the basis on the paper that I've got here.

I mean, where do you want me to leave, Trudeau?

You want me to, do we want to push you in the direction of all the nationals, or are you going to push me in the way, the direction of the biotech and the national art?

I think that's awesome, but I'm ready to start initially in the way that most of the nationals have, although he's not going to want to do it.

And we may have to accede to his desires to continue floating.

And that's not going to hurt us.

We are going to have to restructure any lines that are not going to be formed until that's continued to float.

But he made several questions, which I've got outlined in this one round.

I'm going to warn you that if he floats, he floats, and I'll start out to 107.

He dropped on a par with us now.

So that would mean he'd have to float up 7% before he ever intervened.

In other words, the Canadian dollar would be 100% to the dollars.

They haven't discussed anything like that with us yet.

Well, yes, we've been talking at the lower levels kind of.

Just so you'll have to take part of your...

Part of your share of this, of this revaluation, you want to close at $11,000 and achieve the level of marketing that is fine.

Now, I suppose he said, no, we don't want to do that because we want to go to all the national orders.

I just said, that's fine.

Then you take your pro rata share of the weighted average, which will cost you just as much.

He said, that's fine.

You want to go to multi-battery prices.

That's fine with us.

We're prepared to settle on 11% of weight there.

It may spark what we want in either deal.

We want these concessions on trade out in squirts or oil agreements, which are outlined in there.

We want the tourist business, which is outlined in there.

And there are a number of other specific items that you could talk to him about.

And I don't know if he's going to get that specific with him.

I don't think he will.

I don't want to.

I don't want to get specific at all.

But I don't know what the hell he's going to bring up.

Well, I'm not offending Mom, so that's not where I'm going to give you the precise points that I think you will have to accept.

That's what I'm going to do.

where it may remove that 50%.

It's not that we try to justify it.

I don't think you can get any of this right.

I would recommend that you, what we say, what can we say that this should be, I'd rather say this should be handled on another level.

But what level do you understand that he's got a mention of what it is, is the Trade Minister with him?

What would you get a mention of?

Yes, just say what would you get a mention of and pay a fee then with the common expenses or whatever it is.

Please enter the present party in the order that is being announced.

I can't get to this.

He doesn't know anything about it either.

I assume he does.

But we were just trying to, I don't know, praise you in case he did.

I know that you just counted on him.

And I just want to say, I'm very disappointed with you, that you now will play a lone hand, that you now will work out our problems on a bilateral mission.

Now, when we first made overtures to you six days ago, you said you didn't want to do that.

You want to go to a bilateral mission.

Now, we'll do it anyway, but we are going to have to work with you on some of these trade matters.

You have your people here, and I'd like for our people to get with you and try to solve them today.

Let me ask you to do this.

You let...

I think you ought to let Jerry Ford, when I give him a call, on that little business of the...

Let's get that ready.

Let Timmons over here know that that's our strategy.

I think it's the best strategy.

But I have to admit, we've got to get it patched up and quit screwing around.

We've got an awful lot of people in this part of this country.

That's right.

You know what?

We've given them, I figured out, we've given them ten, they said they've given them ten billion dollars.

We have got none in the KNAS committee for 20 years now.

I know the argument is, well, what about 400 million people being against us?

What about all that moral leadership and the rest?

The answer is, well, so they're going to be against us without the 10 billion.

Or with the 10 billion.

Either they have the 10 billion.

That's right.

I'm getting to the point that you're talking, and you say you've never heard with us on anything.

That's right.

So now what we will be, we should take it apparently, you know, in Soviet Rwanda.

We're not doing this out of bitterness to this and that, but God damn it, these people are the aggressors here.

They're trying to destroy Pakistan.

Now they recognize half of Pakistan as an independent state.

That's right.

Now these kids no longer need your Pakistan.

All right.

See you next time, sir.

Thanks, God.

Thanks a lot.