White House to Ask End of Ban on Soviet Fur Imports

The United States and the Soviet Union agreed today to lift some obstacles to better trade, and the Reagan Administration will ask Congress to end a 34-year-old ban on importing Soviet furs, Commerce Secretary Malcolm Baldrige said.

After two days of talks with Foreign Trade Minister Nikolai S. Patolichev and a meeting with Kremlin chief Mikhail S. Gorbachev, Baldrige summarized the accord at a news conference and said he believes that trade between the two superpowers will increase.

Under the terms of the accord, Soviet state trading organizations will be told that Moscow wants to increase trade with the United States and that no discrimination should be applied against U.S. firms, Baldrige said.

The United States agreed to “attempt to see” that Soviet firms are not discriminated against, and the Reagan Administration will present legislation to Congress to eliminate a 34-year-old ban on imports of Soviet furs, he said.

Baldrige said the talks here, the first at the ministerial level on trade since 1978, did not deal with underlying U.S. policy toward trade with the Soviet Union, which was attacked by Gorbachev on Monday.

The Soviet leader accused Washington of trying to use trade as a political lever. Soviet objections center on U.S. restrictions on technology exports and a link made by Washington in the 1970s between trade and the emigration of Soviet Jews.