The Termination-of-Aid Provision
The Battle Act forbids United States military, economic, and financial assistance to any country that knowingly permits the shipment to the Soviet bloc of items listed for embargo under the Act, except that if the items are not munitions nor atomic energy materials the President may direct the continuance of aid “when unusual circumstances indicate that the cessation of aid would clearly be detrimental to the security of the United States.”
On August 1, 1953, the President notified the Congress that he had directed the continuance of aid to France, the Federal Republic of Germany, Norway, and the United Kingdom, because the cessation of aid would have clearly been detrimental to United States security. Even though this presidential action took place in the second half of 1953 it was covered in the last Battle Act report, entitled World-Wide Enforcement of Strategic Trade Controls, and the texts of the letters that went to the Congress were reprinted as appendix B of that document, pages 73-77.
There were no further Battle Act determinations to continue aid during the 6 months covered by the present report. (Another group of determinations went to the Congress on March 5, 1954, and the texts of those letters will be reprinted in the next Battle Act report.)
During 1952 and 1953, the first 2 years in which the Battle Act was in force, the total amount of shipments of Battle Act embargo items knowingly permitted by countries receiving United States aid was in the neighborhood of $15 million. Of this amount, 74 percent consisted of “prior commitments”—that is, commitments made before the Battle Act embargo lists went into effect on January 24, 1952. None of the shipments were arms, ammunition, implements of war, or atomic energy materials. Only $98 of the total went to Communist China, all the rest to the European bloc. The $15 million may be compared with a total of $2.7 billion of exports of all descriptions from the entire free world to the Soviet bloc during the same 2 years.