Trade agreements and low tariffs have been, since the war, like aging beauties who come away from each face lifting looking not better, but only a little more peaked. After almost six years of Congressional mauling, the Reciprocal Trade Agreements Act is expiring in a final battle by the Administration to save it from the crippling amendments of the high tariff, special interest bloc in Congress led by Representative Richard Stimpson of Pennsylvania.

President Eisenhower, alive to the clamor in Europe for "Trade, not Aid," has offered a bill to extend the law for an interim year while a commission studies the entire trade problem. In a message to Congress he rightly emphasized the importance of reciprocal trade and lower tariff barriers as a solvent in the problem of European defense, and as a badly needed bolster to several declining export economics.

But to the high tariff bloc in Congress, any delay in the demise of the Trade Act is too long to wait. Attempting to win Stimpson's support for the extension, Eisenhower appointed a high tariff advocate to the Tariff Commission. After this appointment, Stimpson agreed unofficially to cooperate with the President's program but only if he fills the remaining Commission vacancy with still another Stimpson approved member.

This kind of "deal," besides having the air of a sellout, would be not real advantage to the Administration. Loading the six man Commission with high tariff partisans would be a large price to pay for Stimpson's cooperation in Congress. The President has forwarded his own bill for the continuation of the Trade Act. The measure makes a logical and encouraging sequence to the British move of increasing the percentage of their Continental imports, and West Germany's similar trade-easing move. The President has rightly acted to leave open the chance for lower tariffs, but he need not now bend to special interest pressure to accomplish this desired end.