BRITISH IMPORTS

Ashburton Guardian, Volume 67, Issue 235, 17 July 1947, Page 4

BRITISH IMPORTS

QUICK CUTS UNLIKELY (Rec. 12.15 p.m.) LONDON, July 16. Britain is unlikely to make quick cuts in imports in spite of the United States Congress delay in considering the Marshall Plan, says Reuter’s diplomatic correspondent. Before anything i>3 received from America. European countries may benefit from each other. Britain, in addition, has a prospect of buying from non dollar countries and under the hoped-for trade pact of securing grain and timber from Russia, and later supplies from the colonies. These factors may enable Britain to carry on satisfactorily until the Marshall Plan operates. The United States may take a very elastic view of clause nine of the British loan agreement so far as it concerns colonial development. Clause nine forbids Britain to grant trade preference to any country as against America. There is no question of modifying clause nine in relation to the bigger Dominions, or in relation to any long-standing pre-war developments like Rhodesian tobacco growing. There could be no general abandonment of clause nine without the consent of Congress, which would take considerable time.