Wairarapa Times-Age THURSDAY, JULY 22, 1943. TRADE AFTER THE WAR.

Wairarapa Times-Age, 22 July 1943, Page 2

Wairarapa Times-Age THURSDAY, JULY 22, 1943. TRADE AFTER THE WAR.

gOME rather alarmist ideas have been expressed in Parliament and elsewhere as to the obligations in the field of external trade to which New Zealand may find itself committed when the war comes to an end. It has been pointed out, for instance, that this country has become formally a party to the lease-lend agreement between the United States and Great Britain under which the parties have bound themselves to direct their policies to the expansion of appropriate international and domestic measures of production, employment and the exchange and consumption of goods. . . to the elimination of all forms of discriminatory treatment in international commerce, and to the reduction of tariffs and other trade barriers. Amongst other things if has been suggested that our participation, witli other Empire countries, in this declaration of policy aims may involve the-abandonment of the Ottawa agreements and of differential tariff's. These suggestions, however, obviously run rather a long way ahead of accomplished facts. There are aspects of the lease-lend agreement and of transactions under it entered into by this country which will bear clearer elucidation than they have yet received. As to the conditions in which the lease-lend programme is ultimately to be adjusted, or balanced, something remains to be explained, and it is desirable that it should be explained, before Parliament dissolves. To suggest or suppose, however, that participation in the lease-lend programme commits this country or any other to a wholesale abandonment of protective tariffs, including the system of inter-imperial preference, is, as has been said, to run ahead of facts. That perhaps appears most clearly in the absence of any evidence that the United States, the fountainhead of lease-lend, is prepared to abandon, or even greatly to modify a system of high tariff protection. There is a very general and altogether commendable desire for a lowering of trade barriers to a minimum in the post-war world and in the right conditions New Zealand, in common with other countries of the British Commonwealth, might well be content to participate whole-heartedly in that policy. With a view to the unshackling of post-war trade, tentative proposals have been put forward in both Britain and the United States for the establishment of an international clearing union (though that term is applied specifically only to the British plan), and for the creation and use of a stabilised international currency, in which the credit balances or overdrafts of trading countries would be assessed. As regards both the proposed currency unit and the balancing of trade dealings these proposals, as yet only at the stage of discussion, raise exceedingly complex problems. The root question, however, is whether nations in general, or a large number of nations, are prepared to trade on the basis of accepting payment in. goods and services for the goods and services they export. If great and small nations are prepared to do this, making the adjustments that are necessary to meet the position of debtor and creditor countries, a new and promising chapter will be opened in the history of world trade. Unless, however, foundations are thus laid for genuinely reciprocal world trade, it is likely that New Zealand and other Empire countries will remain free as at present to make their own fiscal and other arrangements for the regulation of trade.