AMERICAN TARIFF.

Manawatu Times, Volume XLVI, Issue 2084, 27 March 1922, Page 4

AMERICAN TARIFF.

The "Christian Science Monitor" states that the Republican Party in the United States is confronted with an economic situation with which it has never before had to grapple. When it was a debtor nation, sending' abroad millions of dollars annually in payment of interest upon loans, and when this was supplemented by the expenditure of American tourists abroad, estimated to reach high into the hundreds of millions, it was possible largely to shut out foreign goods from American markets. To-day the world is debtor to the United States. The mere interest account on loans made to the Allied Powers evceeds 600 million dollars annually. If foreign peoples wish to pay ther interest —to say nothing of some portion of the principal annually—with their products, how can tariff walls be erected to keep these products out? The President seeks to meet the situation with a tariff commission with broadly flexible powers, by the exertion of which it can continually change the

rate of duty levied upon products coming to aur ports. But while agreeingl that this course has long been favourably discussed in business and financial circles, the Boston journal says that the difficulty which the President rinds in reconciling the ancient protective policy of his party with the new financial and economic conditions would be very largely removed if the enormous inter Allied debts were all cancelled or at the very least deferred for a prolonged period of reconstruction.