TRADE WITH THE DOMINIONS.

Otago Daily Times, Issue 19472, 6 May 1925, Page 5

TRADE WITH THE DOMINIONS.

POLITICIANS’ STUDY, (Fbdm Oue Own Correspondent.) LONDON, March 24. At a further meeting of the Committea of the Parliamentary Association, which has been formed to study questions of “Trade, Communications, and Finance,” in consultation with visiting members frank' the dominion parliaments, Mr F. L. M’Dougall (representative of Australia pa the Imperial Economic Committee) gave an address upon “The Value of the Australasian Market to Great Britain.” Me Philip Snowden, MJP., presided. Mr M’Dougall said that Australia and Now Zealand were more valuable markets than was generally realised. Seven million people in Australia and New Zealand bought more from Great Britain in 1924 than all Scandinavia, plus Holland, than all Africa, than the whole of Central, plus South America, or than the 500 millions of China and Japan. Australia was twice as valuable ■as Argentina, and New Zealand in 1924 bought as much from Britain as did China. The value of the* al dominion markets was due to (1) prosperity and equitable distribution of wealth: (2) national sentiment, which caused buying preference; (3) tariff preference. The value of a tariff preference depended upoa the severity of competition, and in a world in which America, Germany, France,- Bel* gium, Japan, Ozecho-Slovakia, and even Italy, were becoming ever more serious competitors the value of the sheltered markets of the Empire could hardly ba exaggerated.