TRADE RELATIONS

Manawatu Standard, Volume LVIII, Issue 76, 26 February 1938, Page 9

TRADE RELATIONS

AUSTRALIA AND AMERICA. ACTIVE CO-OPERATION. CORDIALITY IN WASHINGTON. (United Press Association—By Electric Telegraph—Copyright.) Received February 26, 10.10 a.m. WASHINGTON, Feb. 25. Expressing pleasure at the adjustment of the trade dispute between Australia and the United States the Secretary of State (Mr Cordell Hull) told the Australian Associated Press to-day that he was happy relations between the two countries were now .so good. “Indeed, it is simply impossible,” he added, “that Australian-American relations will ever be too good.” This cordiality is reflected throughout Washington officialdom, and since Canberra has abandoned the licensing system no further resentment is felt, and the American Government is ready to face the future on the friendliest basis. Negotiations can therefore start with a dean sheet, and while several factors which cannot be controlled by the American Government remain, preventing immediate steps towards detailed treaty talks, the stage is set for developments. VITAL PROGRESS MADE.

The State Department feels that vital progress has been made to the extent that the two essential conditions to even a preliminary agreement have been fulfilled. The first is the removal of a discriminatory policy and the second is the concrete fact of a counterbalancing treaty being almost completed with an industrial country to offset the objections to a treaty with a primary producing country such as Australia, the policy being that concessions granted to the nation exporting principally agricultural products, similar to those produced in the United States, must be offset by expanding the American markets for the same products in another industrial country. The fact that Britain happens to be the industrial country with which a treaty is impending is accidental, but with this achieved the ground can be cleared. The one demand which the United States is certain to make in the treaty negotiations is for most-favoured nation treatment. Naturally the treaty talks will not he all plain sailing, and one of the dangers Australia will have to guard against will' be to avoid paying for the concessions granted bv the United States to the other Dominions if not to Britain. Neither the American nor the Australian officials arc ready to predict when the discussions are expected to roach a concrete form with so many uncertain factors still operating, but a favourable augurv is acknowledged in the fact that the Anglo-American discussions are proceeding in a most satisfactory manner.