The Press THURSDAY, OCTOBER 13, 1949. World Trade

Press, Volume LXXXV, Issue 25933, 13 October 1949, Page 4

The Press THURSDAY, OCTOBER 13, 1949. World Trade

The conference on trade and tariffs at Annecy earlier this year has produced no such substantial results as the Geneva conference of two years ago achieved. The tariff concessions announced on Monday in the capitals of the 23 original and 10 new signatories of the General Agreement on Trade and Tariffs are modest enough; but they are by no means disappointing. They represent another step, although a short one. toward the ideals of free and multilateral world trade; and this forward step has been taken at a moment when most of the countries concerned are under the strongest compulsion to retreat. At the conclusion of the Annecy conference the chairman, Mr Dana Wilgress, Canadian High Commissioner in London, gave a very pessimistic estimate of the course of world trade in the immediate future. He predicted that many other signatories beside Great Britain would invoke the “ escape clauses ” of the Geneva agreement, and with their authority and protection raise new barriers faster than the old ones could be pulled down. Since the close of the conference the outlook has been improved, not to saj’ transformed, by American Congressional action. The passing of the Reciprocal Trade Agreements Act extends for two years the power of the President to adjust tariffs by international negotiation. Congress’s hostility to the concessions made by the United States delegation at Geneva in 1947 and the doubts about the future of the reciprocal tariff reduction policy which

which Mr Cordell Hull began in 1934 combined to make the American delegation at Annecy extremely cautious. The way is now clear for the United States to take the lead in another serious attack on barriers to world trade: and only the United States is in a position to lead. But the United States cannot be expected to lead if other countries refuse to follow closely behind. The essence of the Hull policy was reciprocity: and although, since the dollar crisis deepened, there has been a full-throated demand from foreign critics for the United States to lower tariffs unilaterally, there is no reason why the United States should make concessions and receive none in return. There is good reason to believe the Administration will be generous in the tariff-cutting negotiations which, as the cables reported on Tuesday, the President and the State Department are preparing for next year. But the countries which want the means to earn dollars must also be generous. For many of them, including New Zealand. that will mean paying more attention to the principles of the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade, and to their commitments under it, and less—very much less—to the clauses which offer them, under certain conditions, escape from their responsibilities.