Strong economic ties are an essential element in our free world partnership.  Increasing trade and investment help all of us prosper together.  Gratifying progress has been made in this direction, most recently by the three-year extension of our trade agreements legislation.

I most earnestly request that the Congress approve our membership in the Organization for Trade Cooperation, which would assist the carrying out of the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade to which we have been a party since 1948.  Our membership in the OTC will provide the most effective and expeditious means for removing discriminations and restrictions against American exports and in making our trade agreements truly reciprocal.  United States membership in the Organization will evidence our continuing desire to cooperate in promoting an expanded trade among the free nations.  Thus the Organization, as proposed, is admirably suited to our own interests and to those of like-minded nations in working for steady expansion of trade and closer economic cooperation.  Being strictly an administrative entity, the Organization for Trade Cooperation cannot, of course, alter the control by Congress of the tariff, import, and customs policies of the United States.

We need to encourage investment overseas by avoiding unfair tax duplications, and to foster foreign trade by further simplification and improvement of our customs legislation.

We must sustain and fortify our Mutual Security Program.  Because the conditions of poverty and unrest in less developed areas make their people a special target of international communism, there is a need to help them achieve the economic growth and stability necessary to preserve their independence against communist threats and enticements.

In order that our friends may better achieve the greater strength that is our common goal, they need assurance of continuity in economic assistance for development projects and programs which we approve and which require a period of years for planning and completion.  Accordingly, I ask Congress to grant limited authority to make longer-term commitments for assistance to such projects, to be fulfilled from appropriations to be made in future fiscal years.

These various steps will powerfully strengthen the economic foundation of our foreign policy.  Together with constructive action abroad, they will maintain the present momentum toward general economic progress and vitality of the free world.

In all things, change is the inexorable law of life.  In much of the world the ferment of change is working strongly; but grave injustices are still uncorrected.  We must not, by any sanction of ours, help to perpetuate these wrongs.  I have particularly in mind the oppressive division of the German people, the bondage of millions elsewhere, and the exclusion of Japan from United Nations membership.

We shall keep these injustices in the forefront of human consciousness and seek to maintain the pressure of world opinion to fight these vast wrongs in the interest both of justice and secure peace.