TARIFFS AND QUOTAS.

Auckland Star, Volume LXIV, Issue 84, 10 April 1933, Page 4

TARIFFS AND QUOTAS.

WHERE IS THE DIFFERENCE»

BRITISH ECONOMIST'S VIEW

Addressing members of the Mam>W Reform Club recently, Sir Arthu7s2£ secretary of the Economic and IWtT section of the League of Nations mi? special reference to the permanent w?' tion between British and world »«£»} ture. He said:— tWIJ "We should aim at this moment-»h.. ever be our ultimate policy— at «»** but not expanding, British productS? For this purpose both tariffs and o»S may be temporarily justifiable, but tt»! should be in their nature provisional J& each main commodity I should like to m< for a specified period, a definite nS,' aimed at, so that either tariffs or ouatT would automatically be modified when 53 price is exceeded. And so far as onS, are adopted I think a public purcfiaim authority is an indispensable corollary™* "For otherwise, -what is the difier«w between a tariff and a quota? It ig tK whereas with the former a part of ft difference in price paid by the cong™* goes to the home producer and part to the Treasury, with the quota the second part goes to an accidentally, arbitral* or possibly corruptly, selected foreign -m. ducer—or, even worse, to an intermediur with no advantage to the producer atjjf I have concentrated on home pofc' because here we can act decisively if Ji will. In international policy we «h<mld in my view, co-operate in a world poS of controlled reflation, and now that »'• have a tariff bargaining power (restrieW but not destroyed, by Ottawa), we should make it the first and dominant object™ of our policy to bargain tariffs down."