Cite as: 539 U. S. 396 (2003)
Opinion of the Court
restitution for Nazi crimes has in fact been addressed in Executive Branch diplomacy and formalized in treaties and executive agreements over the last half century, and although resolution of private claims was postponed by the Cold War, securing private interests is an express object of diplomacy today, just as it was addressed in agreements soon after the Second World War. Vindicating victims injured by acts and omissions of enemy corporations in wartime is thus within the traditional subject matter of foreign policy in which national, not state, interests are overriding, and which the National Government has addressed.
The exercise of the federal executive authority means that state law must give way where, as here, there is evidence of clear conflict between the policies adopted by the two. The foregoing account of negotiations toward the three settlement agreements is enough to illustrate that the consistent Presidential foreign policy has been to encourage European governments and companies to volunteer settlement funds in preference to litigation or coercive sanctions. See also, e. g., Hearings on H. R. 2693 before the Subcommittee of Government Efficiency, Financial Management and Intergovern-mental Relations of the House Committee on Government Reform, 107th Cong., 2d Sess., 24 (2002) (statement of Ambassador Randolph M. Bell that it is the "policy of the U. S. Government" "to resolve matters of Holocaust-era restitution and compensation through dialogue, negotiation, and cooperation"); Hearings on the Status of Insurance Restitution for Holocaust Victims and the Heirs before the House Committee on Government Reform, 107th Cong., 1st Sess., 77 (2001) (statement of Ambassador J. D. Bindenagel to the same effect). As for insurance claims in particular, the national position, expressed unmistakably in the executive agreements signed by the President with Germany and Austria, has been to encourage European insurers to work with the ICHEIC to develop acceptable claim procedures, including procedures governing disclosure of policy information.
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