Trade dispute

“ As a result of this, these nations are pitted against each other. They are industrial rivals—competitors. They begin to arm themselves to open, to maintain the market and quickly dispose of their surplus. There is but the one market. All these nations are competitors for it, and sooner or later every war of trade becomes a war of blood. ”

“ But do we, civilized beings, indulge in the absurd and barbarous notion that we must own the countries with which we wish to trade? Here are our official reports before us, telling us that of late years our export trade has grown enormously, not only of farm products, but of the products of our manufacturing industries ”

“ But the great national policy of putting a duty upon imports is, that it either keeps the foreign trade in our own hands, or draws something for the defence of the country from every foreigner who participates in it with us. ”

“ In a cultivation of the materials, and the extension of useful manufactures, more especially in the general application to household fabrics, we behold a rapid diminution of our dependence on foreign supplies. Nor is it unworthy of reflection, that this revolution in our pursuits and habits is in no slight degree a consequence of those impolitic and arbitrary edicts, by which the contending nations, in endeavoring, each of them, to obstruct our trade with the other, have so far abridged our means of procuring the productions and manufactures of which our own are now taking the place. ”

“ The Government of this country thought it wise to interfere, and say to the merchants: "You shall not run these great risks; for though a few of you make great gain by the trade, the loss upon the whole is much greater than the gain." This was one object. The other was, to deter the French nation, and those exercising authority under it, from committing depredations upon our commerce, and thus procure protection to our trade. ”

“ At the close of the war, however, when American ports were thrown open to the trade of Great Britain, the manufacturers of that country, with the deliberate purpose of crushing American industries out of existence, threw vast quantities of goods into the American markets, completely swamping native productions, and making it impossible for native manufacturers to compete with the importations. ”

“ On the other hand, there are imports so entirely of foreign origin, and so free from considerations of competition with domestic industry, that a large revenue may be raised upon them in the custom-house, without disturbing the freedom or equity of international trade. ”

“ I believe that, if only we could shake off the fetters of a narrow and pedantic theory, and freely reshape our own system of import duties on principles of obvious common sense, we should be able at one and the same time to promote trade within the Empire, to strengthen our hands in commercial negotiations with foreign countries, and to render tardy justice to our home industries.
The Free Trader goes on the principle of placing duties on a very few articles only, articles, generally, of universal consumption, and of making those duties very high ones. ”

“ In the trade to China and India, we interfere with more than one nation, inasmuch as it enables us to partake in advantages which they had in a manner monopolized, and as we thereby supply ourselves with commodities which we used to purchase from them. ”

“ A really wise policy should aim at making a country independent of foreign supply, but this should be effected without resorting to the pitiful shifts of customs duties and prohibitions. Industries must work out their own salvation, competition is the life of trade. ”

“ Trade implies at least two parties. To be free, it should be fair, equal, and reciprocal. But if we throw our ports wide open to the admission of foreign productions, free of all duty, what ports of any other foreign nation shall we find open to the free admission of our surplus produce? We may break down all barriers to free trade on our part, but the work will not be complete, until foreign powers shall have removed theirs. ”

“ He said, "The country is going to ruin; the balance of trade is against us. How can we continue to go on in this way many more years? Our exports last year were so many millions, and our imports so many millions more, and we are poorer by the difference between the imports and exports." ”

“ The argument against the use of anything from its abuse has always struck me as one of the feeblest of arguments. And just see how particularly absurd it is in the present case. The effect of duties on foreign imports, even such moderate and carefully devised duties as those to which I have referred, would, we are told, be ruinous to British trade. It would place intolerable burdens upon the people. Yet for all that the people would, it appears, insist on increasing these burdens. ”

“ Emphasis is laid instead on the fact that in the last analysis the trade is of goods for goods, not of money for goods, and that a tariff on imports reduces, not only imports, but exports also,—that it merely interrupts temporarily the virtual barter between nations. ”

“ Hence in Great Britain, and in most other European countries, the extraordinary duties upon almost all goods imported by alien merchants. Hence the high duties and prohibitions upon all those foreign manufactures which can come into competition with our own. Hence too the extraordinary restraints upon the importation of almost all sorts of goods from those countries with which the balance of trade is supposed to be disadvantageous; that is, from those against whom national animosity happens to be most violently inflamed. ”

“ It is, notwithstanding, much to be regretted that two nations whose productions are of such a character as to invite the most extensive exchanges and freest commercial intercourse should continue to enforce ancient and obsolete restrictions of trade against each other. ”

“ I should therefore wish to leave such advantages still to neutral trade as to make it quite clear to be the policy of America, if she is wise, to prefer the neutral trade that will be left to her to the total stoppage of her trade with the enemy and with ourselves which a war might occasion.... ”

“ A danger to foreign trade is that our exports might conceivably be limited to certain quarters, and might thus rest upon a frail and shifting foundation. Fortunately, however, this is not so, for our commerce is being built upon the prosperity of the whole world. ”

“ We say nothing of the prospects of foreign importation which this fact opens to our agricultural interests,—that furnishes ample subject for future consideration; what we pray the public attention to, is the warning which it gives of the effects of free trade upon the monetary concerns of the nation, and above all on the credit of the trading and commercial classes. ”

“ The second of these great causes of war, protection and the competition for markets, has somewhat changed its aspect since the comparative exhaustion of the world supplies of food and raw material. Before the war, nations chiefly wanted to sell. Markets were the great object of ambition, and tariff walls the great means of offence. Great Britain, of course, kept her doors everywhere open to the trade of the world. ”

“ The merchants and manufacturers, who, while every part of the Continent was disturbed or threatened by the operations of contending armies, had practically enjoyed almost a monopoly of the trade of the world, found their profits reduced, by the new competition to which the re-establishment of peace exposed them, to a point which compelled them to a severe reduction of expenditure. ”

“ Perfect free trade consists in the absence of restrictions on both sides.... We cannot combat rival tariffs, directly or indirectly, without subjecting British industry to severe depressions in relation to foreign industry and foreign labour.... To lay suitable duties upon the production of the foreigner, who lays burthens upon yours, does not give the monopoly of the home market to the home producer, nor turn towards any particular employment more capital and labour than would naturally go there. ”

“ Though these aggressions have hitherto been principally committed on cargoes of colonial produce, where only we can find a market for the produce of the Middle and Eastern States, yet the principles are equally applicable to much of our East India trade, and to the trade with France, Spain, and Holland, from which we derive most of the favorable balance of trade, which enables us to discharge the unfavorable balance of trade with Great Britain ”

“ Examine our trade relations with warring Europe and you see how hazardous a shift in old-time relations would be. To the fighting peoples and their colonies in normal times we send nearly seventy-eight per cent of our exports, and from them we derive seventy per cent of our exports. The Allies alone, principally England and her colonies, get sixty-three per cent of these exports and send us fifty-four per cent of all we get from foreign lands. ”

“ In a world of tariffs, trade barriers, empire or domestic preferences, and various forms of parochialism from which we are by no means free, I think a rule that it is restraint of trade to enter a foreign market through a separate subsidiary of limited scope is virtually to foreclose foreign commerce of many kinds. ”

“ Our exports, in consequence of these different frauds, appear upon the custom-house books greatly to overbalance our imports, to the unspeakable comfort of those politicians, who measure the national prosperity by what they call the balance of trade. ”

“ The inquiry made, and accounts balancedbalanced on both sides, every hurtful article of importation should be cut off; and when this is done, if the consequence should prove a general stop to exportation, then is foreign trade decently interred, without any violent revolution; because the statesman is supposed to have proceeded gradually, and to have been all the while labouring to increase consumption at home, in proportion as the industrious have been forced to lie idle by the other operations. ”

“ No doubt that means hard work, an intimate acquaintance with the details of our industry and trade, an eye upon the proceedings of foreign countries. A modern tariff, if it is to be really suitable to the requirements of the nation adopting it, must be the work of experts. ”

“ He shows that the abolition of customs, which might favour trade in some ways, could not be accomplished without repealing all tariffs and thus discarding the instrument by which trade could be directed into channels of national advantage. ”

“ Your moneyism with its constant devaluations, foreign exchange panics, oppressive custom duties, and tariffs on imports and exports, creating economic disruption, with different standards of life, is one of the main causes for the prevention of free trade and unity between your nations. ”

“ But, before we proceed further, let us define what we mean by the term Free Trade as just used. In the abstract, Free Trade may be defined as that state of affairs in which the nations exchange with each other their various products untrammelled by hostile and prohibitory tariffs. ”

“ In these days of commercial rivalry, when foreign nations are competing with us in every neutral market in the world, when Europe and North America are being closed against our goods by prohibitive tariffs, and the Royal Commission appointed on the late depression of trade has placed on record its opinion that over-production has been one of the prominent features in the course of trade of recent years, and has urged us to display greater activity 415in searching for and developing new markets, we cannot afford to neglect any advantage we possess for the extension of our trade. ”

“ It is obvious that only those American goods which are exclusive or which require no tariff advantage can long compete successfully on even terms abroad with European wares, now sold by active enterprising business men determined to keep and increase their trade. ”

“ But the undisturbed possession of such a profitable trade does not last very long, as the dangers and difficulties decrease in proportion as the country becomes better known, and the opening of other countries, formerly inaccessible to foreign trade, brings them under the laws which govern general competition. ”

“ The state of them has been materially changed by the act of Congress, passed at their last session, in alteration of the several acts imposing duties on imports, and by acts of more recent date of the British Parliament. The effect of the interdiction of direct trade, commenced by Great Britain and reciprocated by the United States, has been, as was to be foreseen, only to substitute different channels for an exchange of commodities indispensable to the colonies and profitable to a numerous class of our fellow-citizens. ”

“ The case which we have just examined, is an example in how remarkable a manner every cause which materially influences exports, operates upon the prices of imports. According to the ancient theory of the balance of trade, and to the associations of the generality of what are termed practical men to this day, the sole benefit derived from commerce consists in the exports, and imports are rather an evil than otherwise. ”

“ This leads interested trade officials to believe that such machinery for the prompt and efficient treatment of disputes which may arise between business men and concerns of various countries will be set up one after another in the countries with which the United States deals. ”