Wairarapa Times-Age WEDNESDAY, FEBRUARY 4, 1942. PRESENT AND POST=WAR TRADE.

Wairarapa Times-Age, 4 February 1942, Page 2

Wairarapa Times-Age WEDNESDAY, FEBRUARY 4, 1942. PRESENT AND POST=WAR TRADE.

JN recent representations to the Prime Minister (Mr Fraser) the president of the Bureau of Importers (Air Gainor Jackson). urged the conclusion at the earliest possible date “with the United States of America and the other nations of our Empire of a pact that will have as its effect the wiping away of all. tariffs and barriers to trade, which during recent years have indubitably been the cause of international strife.” This, to borrow a phrase from Wild West tales, is a “high- wide and handsome” programme, but the extent to which it bears any relation to practical possibilities is perhaps another question.

Mr Jackson apparently takes it for granted that the United States would be willing to enter forthwith into a trade agreement with New Zealand similar to those it has made or contemplates with Latin American countries. This on several grounds may be doubted. In working for Pan-American solidarity in" the war period, the United States has made and is making sweeping economic concessions to the Latin American republics, but ail such arrangements no doubt will be subject to revision when the war is over. The problem then raised, as is recognised in the Atlantic Charter, will be that of organising world trade, from the broadest standpoint, on a satisfactory basis. In the process of that readjustment the Latin American countries no doubt will revert largely to their former European markets.

It was suggested some time ago that the United States might be willing to receive shipments of Dominion primary produce by way of its Pacific ports to offset exports of foodstuffs to Britain 'from the Eastern American States. Apart from any other obstacles to carrying this policy into effect, it seems likely now to be put out of court by war conditions and shipping shortage in the Pacific. New Zealand probably must continue to make the best and most of its existing trade arrangements, looking chiefly to the Mother Country as a market. The subject is one on which something specific ought to be heard in Parliament during the session about to open.

At a longer view, there is likely to be very general and full sympathy with the idea that in the post-war world every practicable effort should be made to remove tariffs and other obstacles to trade. It certainly does not follow, however, that this country and others similarly circumstanced should be expected to curtail their economic development. It is not by insisting that producing countries shall continue to be as nearly as possible only producing countries and nothing else that economic health will be established in the world. The essential condition of a free flow of trade, and of maximum benefits from trade, is simply that all countries, whether they are engaged largely in primary production or are highly industrialised, shall adopt the policy of buying as much as they sell.

In the case of countries like New Zealand, ■which have heavy external obligations, this of necessity implies that debt and oilier charges payable overseas must be included in llie import schedule in striking the annual trade balance. Advocates in the Dominion of a policy of unrestricted imports too often ignore the factor of external payments, but it is plain enough that if we attempted to buy goods from Britain and other countries to a value corresponding with that of our sales of export produce, we should be headed for discreditable bankruptcy. It will remain very necessary that we should take full account of external debt and other obligations in accommodating ourselves Io any liberalisation, of Empire and world trade that may take shape after the war.