Tariff Towers

Tall, straight and spry when he made his budget speech fortnight ago, Chancellor Neville Chamberlain of the British Exchequer was sorely crippled by a sudden attack of lumbago last week. Slowly, painfully he limped into the Treasury for an important conference with Sir George Ernest May. the actuary who is chairman of Great Britain's important Import Duties Advisory Committee of three.*

Stone by stone Great Britain's new and hastily erected tariff ramparts (TIME, Nov. 30, et seq.) have been explored by these three masons of finance. Their recommendations, which Chancellor Chamberlain promptly adopted last week by issuing a Treasury decree effective April 26 were broadly two: 1) The emergency "antidumping" tariff' of 50% on luxury and semi-luxury manufactures, thrown up last autumn in the manner of hasty pioneers who hear war whoops not far off, is now completely torn down. 2) The low but massive 10% General Tariff on manufactures built last February becomes a 20% wall topped by special duties on luxury articles which form castellations, buttresses and tariff towers as high as 33 1/4%. In any fortress there are of course postern gates through which the sly slip in. Thus U. S. typewriters, which have been subject to a 50% tariff and would normally be subject to the new general rate of 20%, will slip in through a special 10% postern.

So voluminous is Britain's new tariff schedule that neither the Press nor the U. S. Department of Commerce had the bulky document cabled over last week, but copies were rushed down to Southampton and put aboard the S. S. Berengaria for delivery this week in the U. S. Even the new rates are "temporary,'' emphasized Sir George May; will probably be revised after Mother Britain has clucked with her dominion chicks at the coming Imperial Conference in Ottawa.

*The other two being (see cut) left, Sir Sydney John Chapman, Chief Economic Advisor to His Majesty's Government since 1927, and right, Sir George Allan Powell, Chief Officer of Public Assistance to the London County Council since 1929, probably one of the world's leading authorities on asylums.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.