EMPIRE TRADING.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXVII, Issue 20622, 22 July 1930, Page 8

EMPIRE TRADING.

The French and German concern about the possible effect on Europe and America of the Empire free trade campaign in Britain is not necessarily wrong in its reasoning, nor is it to be dismissed as of no moment, but its perspective is faulty. A thorough-going policy of Empire trading is none the less vital and urgent because it may economically affect foreign countries, and constrain them to seek elsewhere than the British Dominions for foodstuffs and raw materials. In the very fact that this foreign anxiety is aroused is a suggestion that the proposed policy, in some practicable form, is the right one for the British Empire. To a very large extent, it is the kind of policy already in vogue among other nations. The United Stales has become expert, bv deliberate and long practice, in the building of tariff walls, designed to check all commerce save that which is for American advantage. Germany had a colonial policy dictated in large measure by national commercial interests, and seeks opportunity again to put that policy into effect. France, makes no secret of the same intent. It, is not for other peoples to raise objections based on their own good or on theoretical principles, but to do the best they can, in the circumstances, for themselves. The British Empire has clearly as much right to manage its own fiscal affairs, as a commercial unit, if it so pleases, as has France or Germany or America. There is really no world market, though much current speech would encourage the idea. It is already so divided by tariff walls that trading possibilities have serious limits. Under these conditions, the project of encouraging, by fiscal means, trade within the Empire, is practically forced on the attention of Imperial statesmen as an inevitable procedure. At all events, it is for them, not foreigners who have long profited by an fipen door to the United Kingdom, to say what Britain should do, after having considered what may best serve the whole nation. This is neither selfishness nor retaliation: it is merely the exercise of a legitimate and acknowledged right, arising from the doctrine of sovereignty, to mind one's own business.