Poverty Bay Herald PUBLISHED EVERY EVENING GISBORNE, TUESDAY, MAY 15, 1934. ECONOMIC PLANNING

Poverty Bay Herald, Volume LXI, Issue 18397, 15 May 1934, Page 4

Poverty Bay Herald PUBLISHED EVERY EVENING GISBORNE, TUESDAY, MAY 15, 1934. ECONOMIC PLANNING

A significant statement was made the other clay by Mr. Richard Washbum Child, the well-known American author and diplomat whom President Roosevelt has commissioned to tour Europe and report upon the general political and economic situation. He declared that the creation of economic peace was a thousand times more valuable in preventing war than disarmament or the conclusion of new pacts. There is doubtless a great deal of truth in this remark. The world has been drifting into economic hostilities and revolutionary tendencies which it may bo found very difficult to stay. Nations, in the struggle for existence, have adopted trade policies which conflict severely with those of their neighbors and in self-defence these arc met by counter policies of a restrictive or retaliatory nature. The success of one or the other means deprivation of the comforts of civilisation and even the necessities of life to many thousands of people. We have in mind, of course, the crisis which lias arisen in connection with Anglo-Japanese trade, but that is only one feature of the lamentable world situation. Russia’s bold planning to invade the markets of the world with her dumped goods, produced under forced labor conditions intolerable to other nations, is equally liable to bring conflict and disastrous results to civilisation. The .Gorman policy of building up huge industries upon borfowed money and then repudiating the debts is bound in the long run to end in bitterness and strife. The United States, after enduring untold hardships through a selfish nationalism which recoiled upon itself, is now about to reorientate its trade policy and to seek reciprocal arrangements with other nations. Great Britain, finding herself the dumping ground for the products and manufactures of all nations, to save the decimal ion of her industries and her people from starva-

tion, was compelled to throw overboard her frcctrade traditions and to embark upon a “safeguarding” policy of tariffs, quotas. and rest rictions which must cause repercussions of trade in other countries, and perhaps some estrangement and embitterment. The problem of currency instability is interwoven, both as to cause and effect, with all the other factors which have affected the volume and the drift of international trade in recent years, such as tariff manipulations, quotas, exchange restrictions, cessation of foreign lending and debt moratoriums, and the International Chamber of Commerce at a recent meeting expressed the opinion that unless it was settled there would bo danger of further anti-dumping duties and quotas, thus increasing national isolation and bringing disastrous effects on the timidly growing spirit of commercial confidence. The Chamber expressed the firm conviction that the time lias come when the Governments of the world should take the problem of currency stabilisation Into serious consideration, and that a primary condition for the successful working of a stable international standard is the recognition that international payments can only be effectively liquidated in goods and services. The recent World Monetary and Economic Conference proved abortive because nations had not realised the seriousness of the world situation, but perhaps with the experience of the past two years and the realisation of inevitabilitly of conflict if tho present trend continues there would now' be found a more conciliatory atmosphere. The fault of the last convention was that it -was too large and elaborate. More could be done by friendly conferences between the trade chancellories and governments of a few ox the leading nations. National planning meanwhile is proceeding everywhere, and unless it can be co-ordinated with international planning the result must be, as one commentator has put it, “a bottling up of each nation within its own frontiers, rather than the liberation of the vast productive energy which is now lying unused all over the world by creating a system of organised international exchange on a basis of mutual advantage.” It must be recognised, .says this same writer, that in a world organised economically and politically, as is the wprld to-day, there is no prospect at all of a reversion to the freedom of international commerce in the sense in which it was advocated by Adam Smith. The old freetrade ora has definitely gone and can never be replaced. But whilst in these days every country recognises within its own national economy the need for a largo measure of planned control, there is obviously also a need for international planning, which should take the form not merely of restricting the movement of goods from one country to another but rather of encouraging large-scale bargains for the exchange of goods wherever these are of such a nature as to be of benefit to both parties in fho transaction. Restrictive, protective planning to which statesmen have been devoting themselves for some time past should give way to direct planning for an increased volume of international trade.