Tariffs and World Trade Economists have never ceased to assert
that, except in special and temporary circumstances, tariffs are no cure for unemployment. By now Protectionists, triumphant in this country, arc used to claiming that the assertion is but the petulant voice of an outworn theory Which has been disproved in practice. Yet it seems that the voices of theory and practice may yet agree. The -International Labour Office has been asked by Mr. Lubin, the Anierican member of the GoYerning Body, to make an enquiry into the effects of recent changes in commercial policy on wages and unemployment ; and several delegates to the International Labour Conference have protested that, in their countries, experience of tariffs has shown decisively that they increase, not decrease, unemployment. It is to be hoped that the Labour Office will comply with Mr. Lubin's request, complex though such an enquiry must be. To isolate the effects of tariffs, among a multitude of other causes, is a difficult task. It is certainly too soon for Protectionists to claim that tariffs were the one cause of recovery in this country. Their main effect in general has been to diminish world trade, which can have no prospect of recovery without a relaxation of commercial barriers.
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