TARIFFS IN SAMOA.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXI, Issue 18685, 15 April 1924, Page 8

TARIFFS IN SAMOA.

The American Government's protest against New Zealand's subjection of American goods entering Western Samoa to a differential duty raises an important question. The tariff that is the subject of the protest provides separately specified duties for cigars, cigarettes and tobacco, and then for all other goods not expressly exempted from duty, if British, a general impost of 15 per cent, ad valorem, if foreign, 22$ per cent. This tariff, already in operation, was included in the Orders-in-Council of last year under the Samoa Act, and presumably duly embodied in the annual report made by New Zealand to the League of Nations in terms of the mandate by which Western Samoa is administered as an integral part of this Dominion. The American protest is based upon a convention made by the United States, Germany and Britain providing for equality of commercial privileges in the Samoan islands. But that convention was made prior to the war. , Until the war, it should be noted, Britain had no territorial possession in the islands, having renounced at once in favour of Germany and the United States all her rights created by the tripartite division of the group in 1899. Any claim to exemption from a discriminating rate, in so far as it rests upon that 1899 agreement, would therefore lie originally against Germany rather than Britain. The effects of war transferred Western Samoa under mandate to New Zealand, and Arfl»-* i is apparently endeavouring to establish a claim to fiscal equality on New Zealand's inheritance of that German obligation. That claim is evidently impotent, however, in the eyes of the League, since the League has accepted the report in which the Orders-in-Council are embodied It is unreasonable to argue that the Dominion is under any obligation so inherited from Germany. New Zealand took Western Samoa from Germany while a state of war existed,, and when the mandate was conferred it was part of an absolutely new. order. Americans are accustomed to this principle in their own country it is expressed in the familiar negro phrase, " befoh de wah." To even a greater degree that principle applies to the fiscal question now raised. The Colonial Office must give : an answer shortly to the American protest. Quite likely it will be referred to the League for decision.