The Other Side

Manawatu Times, Volume LV, Issue 6865, 23 May 1932, Page 6

The Other Side

At a conference in London to promote free trade between nations, Lord Snowden, who presided, said that every country in the world was trying to sell its products and not to buy those of other countries. By all kinds of restrictions, tariffs, import duties and, perhaps worst of all, quotas, they are trying to reduce their imports and at the same time increase their exports. This absurd—one might almost say insane, and certainly ruinous—policy, was blind to the fundamental nature of international trade. It did not realise the essential fact that trade was a reciprocal advantage. We were in a curiously contradictory situation. Everybody realised the harm that tariffs and other forms of trade restrictions were doing and y-et all the countries of the world, our own, unfortunately, included, were aggravating the disease by taking larger doses of poison. The promoters and supporters of the recent change in the fiscal policy of Great Britain did not defend protection as a meritorious fiscal policy. Mr. Thomas had repeatedly said within tjie last few weeks that he hated tariffs, that tariffs were a curse, and that he supported tariffs only in the hope of abolishing tariffs. (Laughter.) Mr. Runciman had taken up precisely the same position, and had defended his fiscal proposals only as giving a bargaining weapon; an instrument, aimed with which, he could go to foreign countries and say: "Now let us reason together.” (Laughter.)