THE OTAGO DAILY TIMES SATURDAY, JUNE 17, 1933. ECONOMIC NATIONALISM

Otago Daily Times, Issue 21982, 17 June 1933, Page 10

THE OTAGO DAILY TIMES SATURDAY, JUNE 17, 1933. ECONOMIC NATIONALISM

The general discussion with which the deliberations of the World Economic Conference were opened revealed a strong consensus of opinion in opposition to economic nationalism as expressed in the erection and maintenance of tariff barriers. Singularly enough, the leading representative of the nation which has adopted a policy that has done more than the policy of any other country to check the flow of international trade was the most pronounced critic of commercial exclusiveness. The most tragic phase of the short-sighted and ruthless policy of adherence to trade barriers was, Mr Cordell Hull said, exhibited in the strangulation of international trade. “ Had not the time come,” he asked, “ for Governments to cease erecting trade barriers with their excessive discriminations and hate-breeding reprisals and retaliations?” The pertinence of the question is not lessened by the piquancy of the source from which it emanated. And certainly there is no country which has equal reason with the United States to realise the resentment that is excited by the practice of “ short-sighted and ruthless ” nationalism. Nor is there any which has less cause than the United States to quarrel with the adoption of “ reprisals and retalia-,

tions.” It has been indicated that a determination is being displayed on the part of European and American representatives at the Economic Conference to attack the Ottawa agreements. Some of the opponents of the Government in this Dominion have been publicly expressing the opinion that these agreements are. futile and worthless. Theirs is criticism of the kind which is to be expected. from small-minded politicians who, because they are not supporters of the Government, conceive it to be necessary that they shall oppose everything that is done by the Government. Obviously, however, the view that the Ottawa agreements are valueless is not entertained by great foreign nations. These agreements are included among the “ reprisals and retaliations ” to which Mr Cordell Hull referred. In a world in which nation after nation was building up tariff walls designed to exclude the products of other countries from their markets it became necessary for the British Empire to take thought of its commercial position and to devise measures whereby it might foster ' its own industries and stimulate trade between its own members. The Ottawa agreements are an outcome of the exclusive nationalism which has done so much to strangle trade and, as a consequence,' to swell the volume of unemployment. If the Ottawa agreements have contributed to a growth of a sentiment throughout the world in favour of the “liberalisation of commercial policies,” of which Mr Hull spoke, they have been productive of an international service.