The Christchurch Star PUBLISHED BY New Zealand Newspapers Ltd. THURSDAY, AUGUST 20, 1931. A TARIFF FOR ENGLAND.

Star (Christchurch), Volume XLIV, Issue 197, 20 August 1931, Page 8

The Christchurch Star PUBLISHED BY New Zealand Newspapers Ltd. THURSDAY, AUGUST 20, 1931. A TARIFF FOR ENGLAND.

A GENERAL emergency tariff of 10 per cent for revenue purposes, which is the subject of an inspired forecast by the “ Daily Herald,” might imply the total abandonment of the traditional freetrade policy in Britain and the acceptance of the challenge of the great economic unities that are shaping themselves in the United States of America and the united states of Europe. Britain’s acceptance of the principle of protection, too, would have a very important bearing on the problem of Empire free-trade. For the moment, however, Britain is looking at the matter from the point of view of her internal embarrassments, which are serious enough. The growth of tariff barriers, since the war, and the tendency to increase rather than reduce tariffs, has had a restricting influence upon national trade that has been particularly inimical to Great Britain, in view of her great dependence upon external markets for the disposal of her goods. The high level of employment in Britain, too, has been partly attributable to the protection afforded to industries in foreign countries, and to the ability of these foreign competitors to reduce their production costs below those of Britain. The growth of tariffs, in fact, has left Britain no other course, in the view of many economists, than to impose retaliatory tariffs which would enable her to bargain for preferences either within the Empire, or with other countries. Indeed, the realisation that large scale production and an assured market are indispensable to efficiency and economy in modern practice has emphasised this fact. WAGE CUT ALTERNATIVE. TF MR SNOWDEN is among the Ministers who have renounced their rigid free-trade principles in the emergency, the fact may have an important bearing in the minds of those people who have been taught to believe that import duties would raise the cost of British production, interfere with her great export trade by increasing the cost of raw materials, and involve the workers in higher food bills. But the definite upward trend in British imports of manufactured goods, without a corresponding expansion in exports, cannot be divorced from the failure of the Government to reduce the high level of unemployment. The only alternative to a low safeguarding tariff which might enable Britain, through lower costs of production, to retain a fair share of foreign trade, would be a reduction in wages. On the other hand, there could be no guarantee that a reduction in the costs of production in Britain might not be negatived by higher tariffs in foreign countries, and it is possible that there has been an agreement between the three party leaders to adopt the tariff alternative. Some colour is lent to this possibility by Mr MacDonald’s very emphatic denial of any intention to call for a temporary cu t in wages and salaries. A CLIMATIC COMEDY. WHEN, instead of the third cricket test a sort of blottingpaper comedy is enacted at Old Trafford, people on this side of the world begin, paradoxically enough, to realise the tragedy of the English climate. Evidence to confirm them in this opinion is sufficiently plentiful in the cable messages of the last few days. We are told that the last was the twenty-seventh wet week-end in 1931; that county cricket clubs are faced with heavy financial loss owing to the wet weather; that Lord Hawke is of the opinion that September, which is the equivalent of March here, one of ouibest cricket months, is in England too late for serious cricket. Even the Russian “ economic warriors ” touring Europe said to English inquirers, “No wonder you are still under the Capitalistic yoke. The climate is enough to suppress all enterprise.” In view of these depressing circumstances one cannot but admire the English for their tenacity in weathering the storms and keeping on with the game.