PREFERENTIAL TRADE.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LI, Issue 15548, 4 March 1914, Page 8

PREFERENTIAL TRADE.

While New Zealand has been discussing with satisfaction the boundless possibilities of the American market opened up by the new Tariff Act, the Americans have been considering the compensating factor of Australasian trade. A commission representing the powerful American Association of Manufacturers is already investigating commerce and industry in Australia and will visit New Zealand before returning to the. United States. These American " associations," it should be remembered, are much more effective organisations than the Iposely knit bodies known in British communities. Their members work together with a unanimity generally unknown elsewhere and their power to direct or divert trade, is therefore great. It is entirely natural that American manufacturers should aim at sending us their goods in return for our produce, and it is possibly a mistake to assume that we may be permitted to enjoy the market upon other terras. The danger is that the "preferential trade" movement of the Dominions'may be inimically affected by American pressure if no support comes from the United Kingdom. The stubborn adherence of British statesmen to the Manchester school of political economy has so far kept British ports freely open to foreign trade

regardless of the 'fiscal practices of foreign countries. America has no such fiscal pujudices, and is not unlikely to retiliate against -a " preferential trad' 1 ," which — long as it is not adopted throughout the Empire— may regard as a discriminating tariff. The triumph (»f Tariff Reform in the United Kingdom would greatly strengthen the hands of preferentialists throughout the Empire; its delay may imperil the whole movement. As matters stand the United States is a close continental federation having fiscal unity from one end to the other while the British Empire is an oceanic organisation having no common fiscal understanding. " Preferential trade" is the simplest form which a British fiscal understanding could take and is no more unfriendly to the Americans than their own fiscal system is unfriendly to