TRADE AGREEMENTS

Wairarapa Times-Age, 6 March 1939, Page 3

TRADE AGREEMENTS

IMPROVEMENTS OF RELATIONS. EPOCH-MAKING CONTRIBUTION. OTTAWA. Stating that it was timely to remember that the trade and commerce of the world, whether domestic or international “was based upon mutual confidence and goodwill between man and man, between nation and nation,” the Hon. W. D. Euler, Canadian Minister of Trade and Commerce, has issued a thought- provoking New Year message. The Minister refers to the simultaneous signing of the trade agreements between Canada and the United States, and between the United Kingdom and the United States which come into effect on January 1 as “an epoch-making contribution towards the improvement of international relations.”

“In the year that is over,” says Hon Mr Euler, “it has been Canada’s great achievement, her high privilege, to promote that confidence and good-will by bringing the leading countries of the English-speaking world into more friendly and intimate commercial relations with each other. Canada, indeed, by insisting on her full rights under the British preferences, could have stood in the way of the negotiation of the Anglo-American trade agreement.” The Minister pointed out that Canada and the other Dominions of the British Commonwealth, however, preferred to surrender certain of their rights “in order to facilitate the growth of trade and commerce among the countries of the English-speaking world.” Nearly nine-tenths of Canada’s external trade, he said, was conducted with Empire countries or with the United States, while a considerable proportion of the remainder was carried on with countries with which “we have always been in friendly commercial relations.” Summing up the trade and commerce of Canada, Hon Mr Euler states that “Canada may on many grounds anticipate a better business year in 1939, particularly in respect to her primary products.