Trade with..the United States It would be rash to assume
that an Anglo-American trade. agreement will .result from the preliminary con- versations which, as announced from an authoritative source, have taken place between Great Britain and the United .States. Indeed, the object of the conversations has been to discover whether such negotiations are even possible, and a survey has been made, for this purpose, of the commodities and tariffs entering into Anglo-American trade. Mr. Cordell Hull, the Secretary of State, has already negotiated ten such agreements with other countries, as a means to carrying out his policy of restoring. • economic and financial equilibrium by reducing trade barriers and reviving international trade, and an agreement with Great Britain would be regarded as the final vindication of that policy. But, apart from questions of detail, there may be serious obstacles in the way of negotiation—the Ottawa agreement and the debt question among them. But a reduction of the American tariff would .do much to, destroy one of the strongest arguments for non-payment of the debt, and its value would be such that, if the debt itself stood in the Way, we should be ill-advised not to make an offer which, while less' onerous to us than the 1923 agreement, would be regarded as reasonable by the Americans.
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