TARIFF POLICY.

Press, Volume LXVIII, Issue 20488, 5 March 1932, Page 15

TARIFF POLICY.

OFFICIAL BRITISH VIEW REASON FOR BARRIERS. HOPE OF FREER MARKETS. * (BRITISH OFFICIAL TVIRSLESS ) . (Received March 4th, 5.5 p.m.) RUGBY, March 3. The President of the Board of Trade, Mr Walter Runciman, made interesting remarks on the new British tariff policy at the Foreign Press Association luncheon to-day. He said that having given the whole world an open market for so long, the rest of the world must not grudge Great Britain regulating her imports as other countries regulated theirs. He continued: I never felt wc should do good either to ourselves or to anyone else in the world by adding trade barriers blindly, without a reason. There may be a good reason for now restricting the area of our free markets. I hope it may be the precursor of freer markets not only' here, but elsewhere. It is sometimes necessary in the interests of good' medicine to inoculate the patient with a disease something similar to that from which he is suffering. Tariff barriers may prove to 1)0 the only way by which we can guide international trade into profitable channels. The Government is determined to make arrangements during the summer and autumn with the Dominions for increasing the volume of Imperial trade, but that will not preclude them from making friendly arrangements with foreign countries. I look forward to such arrangements with great hope." Mr Runciman added that his personal view was that the only thing which would give the world a. real stimulus was the cessation of those gigantic international payments which threw trade out of gear and hampered it on every hand. -