SUMMARYThe desirability of United States trade with the USSR has been the subject of considerable debate for a number of years. The US government has generally restricted such trade, restraining its own citizens byfiatand trying to restrain the citizens of friendly nations through pressure on their respective governments.On October 9, 1963, President Kennedy announced that the US government would approve export licences for private grain traders seeking to sell wheat and other agricultural commodities to the Soviet bloc. The statement suggested a possible shift in US policy.Two major alternative hypotheses seem relevant in explaining the decision of the US to sell wheat to the USSR: (1) the gains accruing to the US relative to the gains accruing to the USSR are sufficiently more in favor of the US than previously available trade to justify the decision to trade, and (2) US policy is shifting toward a greaterrapprochementwith the USSR—that is, at the same relative gains from mutually beneficial trade, the US is willing to deny fewer gains to the USSR.One possible method of eveluating the two hypotheses would be to examine official statements in the US and abroad on this matter. However, the probability of error associated with believing the reasons individuals (or nations) offer to justify their behavior is exceptionally high. Accordingly, the hypotheses are evaluated by examining the data available, indicating the behavior implied by each hypothesis, and then examining the agreement of the implied with the observed behavior.The analysis suggests that the relative gains accruing to the US and to the USSR from the wheat transaction are such that the cost to the US of denying the concomitant gains to the USSR is higher than with respect to most other commodities. At the higher price, the US apparently has decided to buy less restriction of trade. Although the wheat sale may have been a trial balloon to test voters’ reaction to expanded trade with the USSR, the observational statements available to date are not inconsistent with the hypothesis that US policy has not chan