IMPERIAL TRADE

Hawera Star, Volume XLIX, 17 August 1929, Page 5

IMPERIAL TRADE

HIGHER PLANE NECESSARY. BUSINESS MEN SHOULD CONFER. MR CHUR CHILL’S SUGGESTION. (Australian tress Association—United Service.) OTTAWA, Aug. 15. A suggestion for an Empire conference of business men antecedent to any action by the various administrations of : the countries within the Empire, andi that the conference canvas© all the different ways and means of expanding Imperial trade was? advanced by Mr Winston Churchill, ex-Gkancel-lor of the. Exchequer in a speech here. The whole issue of inter-Imperial commerce should be dragged out of the a renal of party politics and lifted to a higher and more reasonable platform. 'Experts in the world of business should survey the problem in the same spirit as a board of directors of the world’s largest, merger and •should advise. Empire Governments of the result© of their investigations. Mr Churchill confessed that while he still considered himself at free-trader, lie was not wedded, indissolubly to any ancient school of economics'. “The question of making the Etmpire independent,” he ©aid, “transcends economic doctrine, and if a plan is made I cannot say it should be condemned because it did not conform to economic doctrine.”

He appreciated the fact that there were some things that simply could not be done. In England no taxes could ever he imposed on imported foods, while the Dominions could not be expected to demolish barriers raised as protection for their own industries.