Europe Moves Toward Union in Trade

Sun (Auckland), Volume II, Issue 349, 9 May 1928, Page 13

Europe Moves Toward Union in Trade

French Tariff Pact Envisages Confederatiori AGREEMENT WITH GERMANY As one of its last gestures before taking its case to the polls, the Poincare Government persuaded the none too docile French Parliament to ratify the comprehensive trade compact with Germany, says the Paris correspondent of the “San Francisco Chronicle.” The Bill beginning the reorganisation of the French tariff schedule was passed simultaneously. When the Premier’s Government of the National Union shall have disappeared popular memory will recall principally its nursing back to health the desperately ill franc in 1926. Tariff reforms have little to intrigue the imagination. Yet in its strides toward tariff agreements the French administration has achieved victories almost on a par with internal financial reforms. The new French tariff regime and kindred measures, in the course of evolution among other countries of Europe, are the foundation of what is coming to be known as the “United States of Europe,” a union that, in the sense given the word in America, is as impossible among the Governments on the Continent to-day as it ever was.

Confederation Plan is Nearing Reality For the moment political considerations are giving way before the demands of economic interests. Political tradition balked at the idea of making rapprochement with Germany the basis of French policy. Economic necessity demanded it. It has become a fact. On that corner stone have been laid or* will be laid a series of trade treaties with other countries. Those with Switzerland and Belgium are already perfected. What the cumbersome machinery of government has not been able to accomplish, cartels among the leaders of various industries are successfully doing. An economic confederation of European States cannot be attained by one country’s efforts. Even considering the changes taking place in both France and Germany in practical advances toward a “United States of Europe,” there is still left an enormous lot to be desired by the most tolerant of its exponents. Its psychological accomplishments have been outstripped by the actual. Whether it is called “the United States of Europe” or the “cartel movement,” or any of a half-dozen other current phrases, the idea of a union with Europe, as distinguished from a union of European States with those of any other part of the world, is becoming a more and more clearly defined doctrine. Keen minds and clever pens have given it popular form. They are clearing the way for a “United States of Europe” in which each State has studied its tariff system and its powers of production and absorption so as best to rationalise its domestic industry. Uniform Tariff Policy

In other words, the tariffs —at present the greatest barrier to a union either in fact or in sympathy —must be regulated purely in a fiscal role. The task of protection of industry and commerce should be delegated not according to the dictates of nationalism, but according to the needs of the industries concerned without regard to which side of the boundary lines those industries are situated.

Such is the ideal state for the future. It is important at present not because it is likely to be realised in the near future, but because the ambition to attain it exists and is becoming daily clearer and firmer in the popular conception. For inextricably linked with the idea of the “United States of Europe” is the question, “What becomes of the rest of the world?” At present the answer seems to be. “It is the rest of the world that is driving Europe into a union.”