TRADE RELATIONS AND PEACE.
jY SECTION of President Roosevelt’s address to Congress which has special claims to attention is that in which Jie declared that the Trade Agreements Act, the. legislative authority for Mr Cordell Hull’s reciprocal trade agreement programme, should not only be re-enacted when it expires in June next, but should be extended “as an indispensable part of the foundation of a stable and durable peace.” While it has no direct bearing on the problem of bringing the war to a satisfactory settlement, a ' liberalisation of American trade policy no doubt might be made a. very important means of improving world economic conditions when the Avar is over. Mr Cordell Hull, who incidentally is one of the possible Democratic nominees for the Presidency, has laboured untiringly and with passionate zeal to extend his reciprocal trade agreement programme. President Roosevelt, however, has only now., come out as an active supporter of this policy. Writing in the “Christian. Science Monitor” as recently as the end of last November, Mr Erwin D. Canham observed that “the old logrolling accretion, by which selfish votes can be unreasonably combined to make a majority for raising tariffs, is now challenging Secretary Hull’s programme,” and added that it will be significantly noted that President Roosevelt has never made himself a whole-hearted defender of the trade agreement programme. It may be, for electoral purposes, that he would seek tacitly to let the programme go by the board in Congress. If that happens, the Democratic Party may be under stress from a new direction, and the Republicans alone would benefit in the end. These anticipat ions have now definitely been falsified. Instead of abandoning the policy of reciprocal trade agreements, Mr Roosevelt has declared that it must be extended. A powerful attack is thus assured in the United States upon the “blind economic selfishness” in I hat and other countries which the President denounced as having produced trade restrictions which had blocked commerce between nations. In this matter Mr Hull is a crusader animated, in his own words, by a belief: — That the rc-establishment of mutually beneficial international commerce is an essential basis of enduring peace and prosperity for all nations. Not long ago, Mr Hull welcomed and applauded a statement by the British Prime Minister (Mr Chamberlain) that “there can be no lasting peace unless there is a full, and lasting trade between, nations” and that “only by an increased interchange of goods and services can the standard of living be improved.” While, however, Dlr Bull is an ardent exponent of the view that on these lines the United States might make its greatest contribution to the rebuilding of a war-torn world, his reciprocal trade policy has powerful and influential opponents in I lit* United Stales —opponents whose “object, for the most part is not to attack the programme directly, but to chain it by making each agreement subject- fo ratification by Congress, where the old tactics of log-rolling and political deals could be reintroduced. ’ ’
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Wairarapa Times-Age, 5 January 1940, Page 4
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499TRADE RELATIONS AND PEACE. Wairarapa Times-Age, 5 January 1940, Page 4
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