BRITAIN'S WAY TO WORLD-TRADE RECIPROCITY [To the Editor of the
SPECTATOR.] SIR,—The real problem for all Industrial Nations under modern conditions of large production is protection of the outlets into other markets, to bring about ultimately the greatest home market scope. To effect that we are not impotent if we face the fact, but in a better position than any other nation owing to our present practically unencumbered basis of trade.
We need only mobilize the value of entry into our own market and use it to compel eqUality of entry for our products everywhere. By an .antiAariff law, we could` resume the power of initiative' to' impose duties" here based solely on the average tetra' of obstruCtion to our entry into the market of every Other country or colony. A Trade Obstruction Index Number; varying for each, would fix the single rate of duty payable •on their prOducts, or as an alternative, a scale of duties on the prodnets of each country corresponding exactly to their own tariff, no More and no le.S.S. -Thete.would establish parity, but with this vital- saving clause—that any' country could, by lowering or dispensing with its own obstruction, without negotiation, that is " automatically," reduce or cancel ours or the reverse. Self interest and the equity of it would operate to bring about rapid reciprocity and a larger and larger area of international open exchange. EXisting commercial treaties would have to go to complete this change.
It- must be adniitted that " Unconditional" free imports have had the oppOsite effect, encouraging instead of deterring
the closing of our Overseas outlets to a fatal extent, and whether we Bute it or not, we have had to accept the fact that cheaper cost of production no longer controls markets abroad, for whatever sacrifices we may make here to keep down costs, can be, and is, being nullified by tariff additions to the price of our finished products abroad before these reach the con- sumer. Our prices may be, and often are, doubled in this way without our consent. Who will lead us back to the reality of free trade through an anti-Tariff League ?—I am,
Sir, &c., A. W. COLLIER. 8th Avenue Works, Manor Park, E. 12.
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