ALL MUST HELP

Evening Post, Volume CXXVI, Issue 137, 7 December 1938, Page 15

ALL MUST HELP

1 The "Star-Sun" says: "A good deal of j nonsense will be talked and written about the Government's decision to interfere with overseas trade, but tne truth is that Mr. Nash had to turn back only to 1931 to find a precedent Everyone who has intelligently watched the course of events during the last year has known that there would have to be arbitrary control of imports, and the only question^ was how soon the Finance Minister would make up his mind to impose it. It is easy to understand why he hesitated, because he was faced with;the certainty that if he had to limit the sale of sterling he would be avoiding one difficulty to create another, and no doubt he hoped the position would rectify itself,without arbitrary action on his part. However, importers naturally continued importing so long as the demand' for foreign goods kept up, and the Minister's hand was forced. One of the results of his action, that will cause him embarrassment will be a sharp decline in the Customs revenue and it looks as if the deficiency in that Department will have to be made up by direct taxation. Moreover, unless the Government is prepared to abandon its policy of inflated domestic expenditure the system of licensing exports and rationing exchange may become a permanent feature of the Dominion's economy, and in that case " the financial policy will daily have to be revised. Conditions now are very different from those that obtained during the depression, because then the volume of imports was automatically controlled by the reduction of the. purchasing power of the community, whereas the present tendency, with. the Government deliberately, inflating the purchasing power of the people, must be in precisely the opposite direction. It is very possible the outcome will be a sharp increase in the prices of certain classes of imported goods but that will have to be faced if and when it arises. In the meantime traders and the general public will have to accept the restrictions, and if they are wise they will respond cheerfully to the Finance Minister's appeal, because that