EMPIRE TRADE RELATIONS

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXXVI, Issue 23395, 11 July 1939, Page 8

EMPIRE TRADE RELATIONS

A spirit utterly foreign to that vhich should characterise Empire trade relations is revealed in the cabled report from Melbourne of objections by British manufacturers to the establishment of a tinplate industry in Australia. When the representatives of any group of British manufacturers can openly discuss a departure from Imperial preference in fiscal policy an isolated dispute opens up a much wider field of argument. The spokesmen for the British tinplate manufacturers say there is a growing body of British industrial opinion that is urging the United Kingdom Government to resume complete freedom to extend fiscal preferences to countries within or without the Empire which are willing and able to grant reciprocal trade advantages. The chances are that this statement is not without a degree of justification. British manufacturers have not welcomed efforts toward industrial expansion in several of the Dominions, New Zealand among them, and British farmers are agitating vocally and acting politically with a considerable measure of success against unrestricted exports of primary products from the Dominions to the United Kingdom market. Empire producers, on the other hand, still maintain that they should have the expanding share of the British market that was promised at Ottawa. The fact of the matter is that conflicting claims between the various parties arc rapidly reducing the application and scope of the Ottawa Agreements. Jt must be remembered, however, that it is seven years since those agreements were reached and that in the meantime trade has not been standing still. The time is approach-, ing when the desirability of another Imperial Economic Conference must be considered. It would be far better if irritating quotas and restrictions could be replaced by a new and workmanlike scries of agreements, demonstrating again that economic unity in an Empire of self-governing I nations is not impossible^