TOWARD FREER TRADE

Otago Daily Times, Issue 23704, 11 January 1939, Page 5

TOWARD FREER TRADE

ANGLO-AMERICAN TO “The United States is, I imagine, 1 the touchiest country in the world when' it comes to tariffs,’’ said Mr Raymond Gram Sydng, broadcast- . ing to British listeners by relay from New York on the Anglo-American trade treaty. “That is due to a long history. Through-* most of our existence we have.been a debtor nation. Then during the World War the United States, ceased to be a debtor country and; be,cartiC a creditor country; but ...that basic fact somehow escaped recognition. We went on behaving like a- debtor; nation : we raised tariffs still higher, and refused to facilitate, the pay- , ment of debts to us .in goods and services, arid we insisted •on continuing to export as usual. And that has been one of the causes: of the economic woes from which the entire world is suffering. National habits are hard to break. Such habits in individuals the psychologist, calls * conditioned reflexes,’ and one of America’s conditioned reflexes is to say that lowering tariffs hurts our workers. , Now it was in defiance of this 1 conditioned reflex that the Secretary of State (Cordell Hull) set out to make new trade agreements with foreign countries. ■ The. first agreements he made were so ■ insignificant in the -ground covered and the volume of trade affected that they,arousedlittle opposition. But Mr Hull had started something, and if one agreement was small, 18 agreements began to mount up. and Mr Hull was changing the American system by nibbling away at it. He put off the agreements with the countries we trade with most —they were ,to come at the end: and the great one was to be with Britain; America’s chief • customer.. Well, the t agreement with Britain has been signed' and published. and, judging from its reception, it is a success.”