EMPIRE TRADING

Wairarapa Times-Age, 1 April 1938, Page 9

EMPIRE TRADING

REGULATION OF EXPORTS TO BRITAIN

SOME DOUBTS AND FEARS EXPRESSED SYDNEY, March 31. Empire producers will have to regulate voluntarily their exports to the United Kingdom or “take pot-luck with the president of the British Board of Trade,” declared Sir Reginald Dor-man-Smith, leader of the British delegation at the Empire. Producers’ Conference today. The British Government was determined, he added, that there should be some regulation and desired that it should be done by the producers themselves. Sir Reginald moved a long motion, the substance of which favoured the principle that Britain should give the first place on her home market to the home producer, second place to the Dominions and third place to foreign countries.

The motion urged producers to do everything possible to develop intraImperial trade and urged the Dominions immediately to conduct treaty negotiations in order to expand foreign markets and that machinery should be set up to regulate supplies to the United Kingdom market from all sources.

It was also suggested that there should be a complete revision of the present methods of organisation on an Empire economic and co-operative basis. “Does this resolution mean that we, as a conference of farmers, approve of local restrictions on Empire trade?” the president of the New Zealand Farmers’ Union.- Mr W. W. Mulholland, asked. Sir Reginald: “This resolution applies only to the United Kingdom market.”

He pointed out that if they could use the Empire as a bargain unit they could force foreign countries to examine their own fiscal systems. Sir Reginald emphasised that the British Government was desirous of bringing about economic appeasement, freer trade and a greater flow of international trade, with the reservation that they were not going to have their industrial population placed out of work by going completely back to the old conditions. Mr J. H. Wain, another member of the British delegation in seconding Sir Reginald’s motion, said that the British Government was determined to do something in fulfilment of its responsibility to its primary producers. The Australian delegates warmly criticised the British plan. Mr. T. Bath (Western Australia) said he feared Sir Reginald DormanSmith was asking them to take the wrong road and contended that an Empire policy aiming at self-sufficiency with a restrictive attitude to foreign countries involving a chain of regulative control would be difficult to undo. Mr. F. Waite (New Zealand) said that what concerned the New Zealand delegation was whether the British proposals involved quantitive restriction. That point must be clearly settled in committee. Discussion was proceeding when the conference adjourned.