RECIPROCAL TRADE

Hawera Star, Volume LIII, 17 June 1933, Page 14

RECIPROCAL TRADE

Empire as Single Unit

T> RIGA DIER- GENERAL SIB WILLIAM , ALEXANDER, M.P., lias placed before the members of the National Union' of Manufacturers, of which lie is president, a new policy for reciprocal trade with foreign countries. “I believe,” lie writes, “all great commercial nations have realised that the time for the resumption of international trading on an extensive scale has mow arrived. If we take from the United States £1,000,000 worth of goods in the form of oil, cotton, tobacco, and other of her products, it should be possible to arrange for America to take from us £1,000,000 worth of goods in return. Obviously, she could not accept without detriment to her own industries the full equivalent in manufactured articles from the Unifed Kingdom. “Therefore, for the purpose of international trade, I would regard the British Empire as one unit, and would offset as a credit all goods drawn from Empire sources. American exports to any part of the British Empire should be correlated to the export to the United States of wool from Australia, gold from 'South Africa, tea from India, furs from .Canada, and a wide variety of raw products from other Dominions and colonies. The decisions of the Ottawa Conference and the extension of the arrangements then made facilitate the initiation of such a system of reciprocal trade, which, incidentally, would be of special advantage in our dealings with low wage countries.”