Defining National Trade Policy and National Interests from Mutual Aid to the End of the War

Abstract

By early 1942, policy-makers in the US, UK and dominions had begun to concentrate on the challenges of rebuilding the international order. There was no sense that this was premature. The failure of the victorious leaders of World War I to think adequately about the peace in advance was widely seen as one cause for the renewal of war twenty years later. Successful planning was considered as important to lasting peace as defeating the Axis powers. One key part of the exercise was the definition of postwar trade policies. For Britain and the dominions that meant deciding what to do about imperial preference. The issue was as much political as economic. To understand how each government saw imperial preference, and how tariff policy was influenced as a result, one must understand the national economic and political histories of Britain, Canada, Australia, New Zealand and South Africa, as well as their involvement in the Empire and Commonwealth. Only then can one fully appreciate what preferential tariffs had come to mean for each of them.

International relations in all their phases are political problems; and international trading problems are no exception in being a politico-economic problem.

(Redvers Opie)

Foreign policy is an expression of national identity, and, because it comprises acts of a public nature, performed on the world stage, it shapes identity.

(Hedley Bull)