BRITAIN’S FISCAL POLICY

Taranaki Daily News, 18 November 1930, Page 7

BRITAIN’S FISCAL POLICY

“CANNOT INJURE FOREIGN TRADE.” MR. MACDONALD’S CONVICTION. By Telegraph—Press Assn.—Copyright. Rugby, November 15. Speaking at a Bedford Labour meeting last night, the Prime Minister expressed the view that "it was absolutely impossible for any British Government to tell the Dominion Prime Ministers that the people of Groat Britain could face a fiscal policy that would diminish their foreign trade or impose taxes on the people’s food and the raw materials of their factories. He was not a dogmatist on free trade, or anything else, but the fact was that in these days they were faced with certain conditions of competition which threatened to lower the standards of living. The threat came not from free trade countries but from protected countries, where wages were falling. Whatever might be said for tariff or import duties, no well-informed man could say that they would keep the standards of life high and enable -the workers of any protected country to maintain their level of living at a really human standard. The Prime Minister thought a Government faced with such problems as his own ought to be granted some security. He did not believe in a general election, or that the country wished for one. ■' •?&