Administration May Be Moving to Pressure Congress into Easing Limits on U.S.-USSR Trade Relations

Political analysis were on the alert today for a new move by the Ford Administration to pressure Congress into easing the limits it has imposed on trade relations between the United States and the Soviet-Union.

The prospect that such a campaign is underway was indicated by the announcement that Secretary of State Henry A. Kissinger will deliver a major address in Los Angeles tomorrow which the State Department said will be concerned with "current important issues across the board" and "the relationship of those issues to Executive-Congressional relations."

The importance of the Kissinger speech was further underlined by the fact that Ambassador Robert J. McCloskey, one of Kissinger’s most trusted lieutenants, has been assigned to brief the media in advance of delivery of the speech.

The Ford Administration is known to be pressing for greater authority in foreign affairs generally and is trying to persuade Congress to relinquish its insistence on setting limits within which the President and Kissinger must conduct U.S. policy. The Administration is seeking a freer hand with regard to lifting the limitations on arms supplies to Turkey which arose from the Cyprus crisis last summer, and on its aid to the governments of Cambodia and South Vietnam.

KISSINGER SPEECH MAY BE OPENING GUN

Analysts agree that the Administration attaches at least equal importance to the issue of trade with the Soviet Union. Both Ford and Kissinger have strongly implied in recent days that the Soviet repudiation of its 1972 trade agreement with the U.S. was due primarily to the Jackson-Vanik amendments in the new trade law and the $300 million per year limit imposed by a virtually unanimous Congress on Export-Import Bank loan authority to the USSR.

Although Ford signed the trade bill and Kissinger expressed his approval of it, even with the Jackson-Vanik measures which he described to the Senate Finance Committee last Dec. 5 as a compromise on the issue of trade benefits and Soviet emigration practices, the Administration now appears to have reversed its acceptance of those limitations.

Analysts believe that the Ford Administration regards Moscow’s repudiation of the trade pact as having put Sen. Henry M. Jackson (D. Wash) and Rep. Charles A. Vanik (D. Ohio) on the defensive, since the Soviet action is widely regarded as a blow to detente and a threat to the framework of Soviet-American relations, including the SALT agreement.

Thus, the Administration may be about to carry its offensive to the public in a new bid for hegemony in the conduct of foreign policy. Kissinger’s speech tomorrow is viewed by observers here as the opening gun of such a campaign.