FREE TRADE IMPOSSIBLE

Nelson Evening Mail, Volume LXVI, 30 November 1933, Page 11

FREE TRADE IMPOSSIBLE

A FOOL’S PARADISE In a recent speech, Major Oliker Stanley, Minister of Transport, said lie 1 welcomed the Ottawa Agreements because they set up the principle ot regulating their foreign trade. He was not going to ask whether they had or had not got the best of the .bargain, or whether the bargains they thought they had got a year ago were as good as they thought at the time. What was important was that they were trying to canalise their trade, and were recognising that they could not afford any longer to produce goods in Britain without any idea of where they should find a market for them. It was idle to think they could get back to free trade. It took ii short time to put on a tariff, but a long time to liquidate the development that took place behind a tariff. To hold before their eyes the chimera- of universal free trade was to live in a fool’s paradise. Alluding to the prospects of bargaining between different countries, and the interference to industry which was thus involved, Major Oliver said that if governments took they must also give. Certain industries might think they were hardly dealt with, and possibly might think it would be pleasanter to get back to the days of non-interfer-ence, but they could not. “You have asked us to come in,” he said, “and we have to come in on the lines of the nation’s interests. That is the price you have to pay for making Government intervention inescapable and inevitable.”