TRADE RECOVERY

Wairarapa Times-Age, 2 March 1939, Page 7

TRADE RECOVERY

HOPES OF AN UPRISING IN BRITAIN MR OLIVER SURVEY. NEGOTIATIONS WITH GERMANY. (British Official Wireless.) Rugby, February 28. The belief that industrial activity in Britain was fully ready for an upswing was expressed by Mr Oliver Stanley, President of the Board of Trade, in a speech in Birmingham today. If and as international tension is relaxed, one could, he believed, hope to a very substantial inprovement. That was particularly true in the export trade, in which an increase was vital. Experts estimated the adverse balance of Britain’s payments in 1938 to have been £55,000,000. In the total turnover of nearly £2,000,000,000, fifty odd millions might not be a very big maladjusment in Britain's international trade, but the trend was unhealthy. Referring to the approaching trade discussions between British and German industrialists, Mr Stanley said that if an agreement was reached on broader principles it would be for individual industries in further negotiations with their German competitors to hammer out the details of an agreement covering their own problems. He and Mr Hudson, Parliamentary Secretary to the Board of Overseas Trade, would not takb part in the negotiations, but their visit to Germany would, he hoped, give opportunities for meeting prominent figures in German economic life and of exchanging views. He hoped that, with goodwill on both sides, an agreement with Britain’s greatest industrial rival in Europe might be reached. If so, it could only be for the benefit of the trade of both countries and the economic position of the world.