TARIFF RECIPROCITY.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LIX, Issue 18080, 3 May 1922, Page 6

TARIFF RECIPROCITY.

Whatever may be the result, there is no question that the effort to reach a basis of tariff reciprocity with Australia was worth making. The Minister for Customs on his return from Australia has discussed the matter with extreme caution, noting that the two previous attempts to conclude a treaty ended in failure. He went so far as to say that the agreement he has made is on a more elaborate scale than any thing hitherto attempted. It does not follow that this of itself makes the prospects of • ratification more remote, but it - will probably be agreed that the difficulties are no less than they were in Mr. Seddoßis time or Mr. Fisher's time. On the whole they would appear to be greater, for New Zealand has now developed certain amotions for secondary industries which were hardly vocal when the previous agreements were discussed, while the intercolonial competition in primary products remains much as it was. The success of the agreement would, in the circumstances, seem to depend on whether it holds the balance evenly between the interests of the two countries—an exceedingly difficult thing to do. Mr. Stewart also speaks of further proposals of a "far-reaching nature" made to him in Melbourne. These evidently have a bearing on the interchange of goods between the two countries, and from the language Mr. Stewart uses to describe them people may be tempted to guess that they go as far as reciprocal free trade. In any event, they will be open for discussion if the Government considers them sufficiently within the range of practical politics to be submitted to Parliament with the reciprocity agreement. The one arrangement definitely made by Mr. Stewart was that goods of United Kingdom origin re-exported from Australia to New Zealand or from New Zealand to Australia are in future to pay only the British preferential rate of duty as if imported direct from the United Kingdom. This is a question that would never have arisen had the Australian preferential tariff been, as New Zealand's was until a few months ago, a preference to the British Empire. It was the discrimination between one part of the Empire and another introduced by Australia, and copied by New Zealand in self-defence, that led to the surcharging of re-expoirts which merchants in both countries have found an unjust burden, ,