TRADE SELF-SUFFICIENCY

Manawatu Standard, Volume LV, Issue 238, 5 September 1935, Page 7

TRADE SELF-SUFFICIENCY

REPERCUSSIONS IN DOMINION. LONDON, Sept. 4. Professor J. G. Smith, Mitsui Professor of Finance and Dean of the Faculty of Commerce at the University of Birmingham, in his presidential address to the economic section of the British Association Congress at Norwich, cited repercussions in New Zealand as an example of the evils of European efforts to attain self-suffi-ciency. If tliev continued New Zealand would be forced to divert her population into uneconomic secondary industries and exclude every article that could be produced at home. The application of quotas and exchange control had gone far beyond the original purposes of smoothing currency fluctuations and stabilising the balance of trade. Europe was at present obsessed with making imports and exports balance bilaterally, which was tending to slow down the international traue capacity of the weakest countries. . Professor Smith considers that the restoration of world trade will be very slow. Even the Ottawa Agreements diverted rather than enlarged trade. “Stabilisation is essential,” lie said, “though unhappily it does not seem within sight.”