TRADE TALKS

Wairarapa Times-Age, 24 March 1939, Page 5

TRADE TALKS

RECENT DISCUSSIONS WITH GERMANY PROGRESS NOW IMPOSSIBLE. FOLLOWING EVENTS OF PAST WEEK. (British Official Wireless.) . RUGBY, March 22. The President of the Board of Trade, Mr Oliver Stanley, today received the president and chairman of the delegation of the Federation of British Industries, which recently visited Germany, who presented a Report of the results of the discussions, with the Reichsgruppe Industrie at Dusseldorf. The report pointed out that the discussions had been preceded by a great deal of preparatory work undertaken with the full knowledge and approval of the Government.

The purpose of the discussions was to investigate whether any plan could be found which might in .the first place eliminate unhealthy competition between British and German industries, and later, by the extension of such conversations to other countries, to increase world trade.

Mr Stanley expressed the opinion that, though political developments in the last few days had created a situation which, while it lasted, made further progress impossible, the delegation, in obtaining the agreement of the Reichsgruppe Industrie to a joint declaration of principles, had performed for British industry a valuable piece of work which, but for those developments, might have served as a basis on which the individual industries of the manufacturing countries of the world could have solved a great many of their difficulties.

It was agreed that only the future could show whether, at a later date and in changed circumstances, the valuable preliminary work thus far accomplished might be developed by mdividual industries to the national advantage. AGREEMENT SIGNED GERMANY AND RUMANIA. SOME SWEEPING PROVISIONS. (Received This Day, 10.25 a.m.) BUCHAREST, March 25. A German-Rumanian trade agreement has been signed, and will be operative until 1944. It contains sweeping provisions, which envisage the adaption of the German and Rumanian economic systems in order to comply with the needs of both mutual and foreign trade. Rumanian agriculture will be developed. Germany monopolising Rumania’s imports of manufactures. A German-Rumanian company is being formed to study oil deposits. Free zones are being created along the Danube, where Germany Will dominate industry and shipping.