Trade and an Expanding Commonwealth

Abstract

1 1 ¥ ET us make this the keynote of our conference an I expanding Commonwealth as a dynamic partnership in •*^ an expanding world community. Backed by these words from the British Chancellor of the Exchequer, Mr. Derek Heathcoat Amory, it was on a hopeful note that the Commonwealth Trade and Economic Conference opened in Montreal on September 15, 1958. The conference was the second of its kind to be called in a generation. As at Ottawa in 1932, it was Canadian initiative which was the decisive factor in summoning and helping steer the course of the meeting. During the two weeks of discussions at Montreal, the eleven sovereign Commonwealth nations represented including such new members as Ghana and Malaya were mainly concerned with the problems of growth. And this makes comparison difficult with the Ottawa Conference. Then the main preoccupation was recession. The economic climate of the day was against expansionist policies. World trade had shrunk by a third since 1929 ; unemployment was at a high level. Throughout the world, countries were raising drawbridges and retiring defensively behind tariff walls. In Canada, the Conservative Bennett ministry was faced with the problem of securing access for Canadian goods in the U.S. market. The Smoot-Hawley Act had represented a return to protectionism on the part of the U.S. Conceived partly as a means of selling more in Commonwealth markets, partly as a form of retaliation against the U.S., the Ottawa Conference helped this country out of a difficult spot. The main result of the conference was a series of bilateral trade agreements, by which preferential treatment was accorded goods of Commonwealth origin. For Canada, imperial preference was considered particularly important in assuring a market for her exports of agricultural products and industrial raw materials to the U.K. There can be no doubt Ottawa served a positive function. Imperial preference helped to stimulate trade between Commonwealth countries ; as a result they never knew the depths of economic depression experienced, for instance, on the continent of Europe. In addition it encouraged American companies