Patience is a virtue
Sir: Writing as one who admired your cour- age in proposing devaluation as an alternative to deflation in 1966, I was surprised and dis- appointed by your editorial, 'Patience is a virtue' (23 August), in which you oppose the use of import controls as a remedy for the appalling trade figures. Your central argument against controls seems to me to be miscon- ceived. You suggest that 'there can be no justi- fication for such a policy being adopted by a country that . . . expects to move sharply into surplus within a matter of months . . This surplus will, however, be achieved at the cost of 750,000 unemployed this winter, according to the National Institute of Economic and Social Research. This is by far the highest level of unemployment this country has seen since the war, and unacceptable from any humanitarian point of view. The achievement of a balance of payments surplus at the cost of high unemployment can hardly be registered as a political success. Nor is there a valid argument against import controls from the point of view of the effect of such controls upon world trade. For any method of obtaining a balance of payments surplus must involve holding down real incomes and consumption, and therefore exert a de-
pressing effect upon world trade for a -tem- porary period. The real question at issue is whether the surplus is to be achieved by in- ternal deflation involving unemployment, or by import controls. It is sad to see a radical journal such as the SPECTATOR argue for the former.
The National Institute considered it would be 'essential' to secure international agreement for import controls; one point made in the editorial, but not mentioned by Mr Bogdanor, was that 'even in the unlikely event of such agreement being forthcoming, the massive precautionary importing that would occur -while the inter- national talks are taking place makes this the foolproof recipe for an even bigger trade gap.' —Editor, SPECTATOR.
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