CANADA AND UNITED STATES

Dominion, Volume 22, Issue 212, 4 June 1929, Page 16

CANADA AND UNITED STATES

DANGER OF TARIFF WAR. Lively apprehensions regarding the effect of the United States tariff proposals have been expressed recently in both Canadian and American papers. In 1928 Canadim purchases from the United States amounted to £180,000,000, about 65 per cent, of her total import trade, while exports to America were £98,000,000 or 40 per cent, of the total exports. “President Hoover is pledged to a policy of farm relief, and this, it is stated, means a virtual embargo against Canadian wheat and an almost equally effective barrier against Canadian cattle, not to mention a general hardening of the duties against the manufactured products of Canada, although the door will be open to such Canadian raw materials as are necessary to the full operation of American industry,” savs the “Canadian Gazette. “What w’ill Canada do in these circumstances? Even a low-tariff Government can be so exasperated as to retaliate. President Hoover does not appear to realise that his drastic proposals may react as a boomerang. Canada with her vast natural resources is not a country that can be treated with scant consideration. The President is prepared to let into the United States certain Canadian raw ■'roducts of which industries have need. What will he do if an export duty is imposed by Canada on these products. The situation seems to foreshadow a state of tariff war that will be injurious to both countries; and we cannot help thinking that in the event of tariffs', being raised on both sides of the border, it will be the United States that will suffer most.”