AUSTRALIA AND AMERICA

Nelson Evening Mail, Volume LXIV, 12 January 1931, Page 2

AUSTRALIA AND AMERICA

INTERCHANGE OF TRADE ADJUSTING UNFAVOURABLE BALANCE i (By Telegraph—Press Association) WELLINGTON, This Day. Among the Monowails through passengers to Sydney is Mr Herbert Brookes, who for eighteen months has been Com-missioner-General for Australia in the United .States, but who has resigned owing to the depression and need of economy. He said that when appointed he reached America at a time of unexampled prosperity and left at a time when she also was suffering very seriously from world depression. The press in America did not seem to make a point of featuring the darker side of industrial depression, but newspapers seemed with one accord to paint the brightest picture possible so that one could not look to the press for an accurate reflection of the industrial situation. The trade of the Commonwealth with America had been going on from bad to worse as far as the balance to America was concerned. America had become committed to a policy of self-con-tainment and the products which Australia was in the habit of supplying to America in fairly large quantities had been decreasing in value from year to year. “As you are aware,” said Mr Brookes, “the Commonwealth has found it necessary to impose higher and higher tariffs in order to adjust these unfavourable trade balances.”