RECIPROCITY IN TRADE.

Waikato Times, Volume 113, Issue 18903, 24 March 1933, Page 5

RECIPROCITY IN TRADE.

TREATY NEGOTIATIONS. AMERICAN PRESIDENT’S HANDICAP A CHANGE IN PROCEDURE. United Press Assn. —Elec. -ret. Copyright. NEW YORK, March 23. The Washington correspondent of the New York Times says the State Department announced that the Government would ask Congress for a definition of certain limits within which the executive can effectively negotiate reciprocal commercial agreements and otiler treaties. This announcement is characterised by observers as a definite end of what Europe calls the “pig in a P°l ce treaty-making which has been the outstanding characteristic of America s foreign policy since the Versailles Treaty fiasco. As to the forthcoming tariffs, war debts, trade concessions and other negotiations the President, Mr Roosevelt, will merely get advance “advice” from Congress telling him how far he can go. Tills In effect will pledge Congress to ratify a treaty after the President and his advisers complete the negotiations. It Is recalled that Mr Roosevelt, as a member of the late Dir Woodrow Wilson’s Administration, was in a position closely to observe why the Versailles Treaty failed in the Senate. At that time foreign observers were astounded at the fact that Mr Wilson s signature to the treaty did not mean its ratification. Since then they have been supiclous of American treatymaking. Mr Roosevelt now intends to obviate the vagaries of the Senate by the expedient of securing its permission In advance.

The correspondent states that Mr Roosevelt’s problem will be to form treaties in exact accordance with the permission of Congress. Otherwise it could refuse to sanction them, but with the co-operation of an Advisory Commission it is believed lie can effect agreements calculated to stand this test. To-day the Secretary of State, Mr Cordell Hull, admitted that conversations had been conducted with foreign envoys. He said they were "preliminary, exploratory ancl even desultory/’ but might be followed soon by bilateral discussions with Britain concerning war debts. That would depend upon when Britain came forward with definite proposals. Mp Hull tends to subordinate war debts to general economic matters and will not inject them into the economic conference as America’s debtors are relatively few compared with more than 50 prospective participants in the conference.

The Government is said to he convinced that unless the nations awake to the dislocated conditions of exchange, currency and other obstructions lo trade, a return to better international ilnaneial and commercial conditions will be delayed.