EMPIRE TRADE MERGER

Sun (Auckland), Volume III, Issue 715, 15 July 1929, Page 9

EMPIRE TRADE MERGER

LORD MELCHETT SAYS IT IS POSSIBLE SUPPORT FOR BEAVERBROOK (Australian and. N.Z. Press Association) Reed. 9 a.m. LONDON, Sunday. Lord Melchett, in an article in the “Sunday Express” supporting Lord Beaverbrook’s crusade for free trade within the Empire, says the idea is not unattainable, but naturally will involve adjustments. It will be the task of those who have the arranging of this Empire merger to see that neither capital nor employment suffers. Practical men can work out a practical scheme by an arrangement of quotas and compensations. The “Sunday Times” learns that Mr. Philip Snowden, Chancellor of the Exchequer, did not mean to convey that preferences would end within a year or two. Efforts probably will be made to reassure the Dominions. An Ottawa message says that in the absence of the Minister of Finance, Mr. J. A. Robb, it is improbable that the Canadian Government will take immediate action with respect to the pronouncement by the Chancellor of the Exchequer, Mr. Philip Snowden, against Empire preferential tariffs. The matter may, however, be discussed when Cabinet meets this week. In the course of the debate on the Address-in-Reply, Mr. Snowden said the Government was most anxious to promote the closest trade relations with the Dominions and every part of the Empire , but it did not believe those relations could be placed on the best footing of \utual advantage by a system oE preferential tariffs, least of all by such proposals as had been put forward with recklessness by Lord Beaverbrook. He hoped that when he left office he would have swept away all food duties, including those on sugar and dried fruits.

Mr. Snowden said he meant to inquire into the difficulties of sugarproducing in the colonies and Dominions, but he would not assist them by tariffs.