WELLINGTON NEWS

Hokitika Guardian, 10 March 1931, Page 5

WELLINGTON NEWS

TARIFF COMPLEXITIES (Special Correspondent). WELLINGTON, March 7. In a recent speech at- Manchester, Sir John Simon said he felt bound to invite his fellow-countrymen, who likehimself had inherited free trade conditions, to ponder on the fiscal methods we may be bound to adopt. A Londonpaper in commenting on this remarked that “The whole mass of antitariff pedantry has been blown to if pieces by this Liberal statesman.” Not so very long ago Sir Philip Snowden made the significant remark that he may be obliged, to do violence to his free trade principles. It would he generally admitted that free trade is the ideal method of interchange between nations. It was never intended by nature

that nations should isolate themselves, on the contrary she has so designed the universe that no one nation can supply its own wants, but must buy and. sell to otheks. The nations have the freedom of the seas and merchandise can be transported t-o and fro, but man-made laws restrict the flow of trade by barriers often insurmountable. The restrictions of trade through tariff walls has played no small -part in causing the present world-wide ee, ouomic depression. There were tariffs before the war but they were mild compared. with what exists to-uuy. After the close of the war quite a number of small nations sprouted into existence, and the spirit of nationalism permeates them, This is expressed In a desire to be self-contained, or at least to become more industrialised. Before the war England, Wales, Scotland and Ireland were one so far a.s Customs duties were concerned; to-day a part of Ireland, the -Irish Free State, has raised a tariff wall against the others. All the mushroom European Nations now have ' prohibitive tariffs, hut the greatest offender in this respect has Been that great and wealthy but insufferably selfish polyglot people that make up the United States nation. It was only about two or three years ago that the United States raised her tariff wall to a prohibitive height and by her action forced the whole of Europe except Britain to amend tneir tariffs in accordance with the American plan.

It was a cruel blow aimed at her debtors and she has been roundly condemned by many of her own people. Thus Mr Paul M. Warberg, a leading New York banker said recently ‘‘When, behind our wall of high protection we build up our powerful -instrument of mass production; when, not satisfied with our huge domestic- markets, and with the position- of overwhelming strength the war and the years following it -had given us, we began from our ambush of high protection to oonquer the foreign markets upon which uie Old World depended for a living; when we forced the peoples of Europe into a desperate attempt to meet our advances by regrouping, rebuilding and modernising their own industries; when we further increased our tariff, thus further depressing the prices for the goods they had to sell in order to pay for what they are buying from us; when in addition they had to find the money with which to square their annual interest and amortisation charges on their debts to us; and finally when they had to find the means to pay us their annual instalments of war debts—may we wonder that their purchasing power broke down.

To-dny the world is ringed in with tariffs and Britain cannot move in a tangent and expect to succeed. Like a silent man in a cheering crowd Britain is receiving neither consideration nor sympathy, and many of her statesmen now realise that we are livhig in a world of protection and cannot expect to succeed isolated from that world. In self-defence Britain must go in for a. measure of protection, and when she does this she will have a bargaining weapon of some value. Foreign goods are dumped on Britain but British goods are not wanted in foreign countries. Protection would put her “on side” with protection countries, and when she Is in that position the world will be ready to come to arrangements. After all the world’s greatest markets are to be found in the British Empire as a whole. A British Empire Zelzerin would make other nations feverishly anxious to come to terms with us. The high protection of recent years has stifled the trade of the world.