EMPIRE TRADE

Wairarapa Times-Age, 10 August 1938, Page 5

EMPIRE TRADE

AND RELATIONS WITH UNITED STATES SIP. E? PAGE’S MISSION FIELD OF NEGOTIATION WIDENED By Telegraph—Press Association. Copyright. NEW YORK, August 8. It is believed that Sir Earle Page, Australian Minister for Commerce in his talks with Mr Mackenzie King, Canadian Prime Minister, and the Canadian Minister of Customs and Trade, has laid a basis for a revision of the commercial relations between Australia and Canada after the conclusion of the Anglo-American trade pact negotiations. Addressing business men in Toronto today, Sir Earle Page stressed the importance of closer relations not only between the United States and Britain, but between the United States and the entire British Empire. He praised the 1932 Ottawa agreements as being an extension of the existing comparative free trade throughout the Empire. “That cooperation should be extended to cover bargaining with the United States,” he added. “A trade treaty between Britain and America,” he continued, “would be very good, but one between the United States and the whole Empire would be a great step toward world peace. Such a treaty, if wide in scope and liberal in terms, must have repercussions on the whole of the world trade.” In order to achieve best results, Sir Earle Page thought that negotiations should be conducted simultaneously between the United States, Britain and the Dominions. He concluded by saying that only the combined strength and common action of all the Englishspeaking nations could rescue the world from the welter of disorganisation in which it found itself.