Reciprocity

Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: between two countries is not extensive enough to make tariff agreements profitable or where such agreements cannot be reached for other reasons. On January 1, 19o1, Germany had only eight tariff treaties, while she had twenty-eight most favored nation treaties. 4. Treaties with neither tariff agreements nor the most favored nation clause. Such treaties contain general regulations concerning the commerce between the two States, and are made only with such countries as are partially open to European commerce. Germany, for instance, has made such treaties with China, Korea, Siam, and the Kongo Free State. -7 In England, of course, a different idea has been in control. The events of the past few years have had no inconsiderable effect in weakening the adherence to free trade principles which has been so characteristic of that country throughout the latter half of the nineteenth century. The utter isolation of England in consequence of the rising tide of protectionism on the Continent as well as in the Western Hemisphere, the increasing competition in foreign markets, and the decreasing superiority of English-made goods have together led to a certain revival of the belief that tariff duties may be used as a threat wherewith to force other countries into acting in a way that would throw their markets more widely open to English goods. The agitation for fair trade as against free trade has attained some strength. It has been demanded by some that tariff duties should be imposed upon goods coming from all those countries which decline to make equal concessions to the goods of Great Britain, and that free trade privileges should be offered only to those countries which accord the same treatment to British goods. In other words, what we call reciprocity has in England taken sha...