Mr. Runciman and Free Trade It is pleasant to compliment
Cabinet Ministers at the end of a long term of office, but congratulations to Mr. Walter Runciman after his farewell speech in Parliament on Tuesday 'as President of the Board of Trade must be severely tem- pered in view of the contents of that utterance. Replying to Sir Arthur Salter, who had pressed for a commercial agreement with America, a policy of the open door in the Colonies, encouragement of the "low-Tariff group," and a modification of Imperial Preference, Mr. Runciman made a speech that was precise only in its praises of Protection and Imperial Preference, and vague only in its descriptions of the Government's efforts to achieve freer trade. 'He had not concealed from American statesmen the obstacles to a trade agreement ; the policy of the open door is forbidden because it means giving entry to imports from low-wage countries ; to join the low-tariff group means to invite retaliation from other countries; and the frustration of the OuChy agreement for tariff reductions between Belgium and Holland by invocation of the most-favoured-nation clause was justified because otherwise Dutch goods would have got into Belgium and vice versa at lower rates than British. After so negative an answer to proposals for increasing world trade, Mr. Runciman warned British producers to increase their foreign markets as a defence against the inevitable slump to come—an admonition which tends to irritate when so little, apparently, can be done to enable producers to comply with it.
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