Miscellaneous Activities
As usual, a wide range of activities relating to the Battle Act and economic defense was carried on during the last half of 1953.
The intensive United States review of the control lists has been mentioned in chapter V.
The United States Government continued to increase its emphasis on seeking improvements in the free-world systems for preventing illegal diversions of strategic goods. This problem involves goods of free-world origin which start out to friendly destinations but are illegally diverted en route to destinations behind the Iron Curtain. Our Government: (1) set up improved machinery in Washington for collection and coordination of information, in order to increase the effectiveness of our participation with other countries in the enforcement program, and (2) sought to work out better intergovernmental machinery to deal with diversions.
Our Government also intensified its efforts to analyze current trade patterns between East and West, including the large number of trade agreements concluded between free-world nations and Soviet bloc nations.