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the clause usually reads: "the most-favored foreign nation," making it clear that special treatment, e. g., preferential tariffs, may be accorded to the mother country. But even when the word foreign is not inserted, the most-favored-nation clause is interpreted in the same way, and the general commercial treaties now in force between the colonial powers do not accord the open door in the colonial markets. Open-door provisions are confined to (1) commercial treaties made by states formerly independent but now protectorates, or (2) political treaties between the powers-peace treaties or those making settlement of territorial questions. The general commercial treaties usually reserve the coasting trade of the mother country to national vessels, and in case the treaty deals with the subject, the coasting trade of the colonies is usually likewise restricted to national vessels; but a few treaties stipulate that a part or all of the intercolonial trade and that between the mother country and the colonies shall remain open to foreign vessels.

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VI. FEATURES OF COLONIAL TARIFF POLICIES-SUMMARY.

POLITICAL.

In considering colonial tariff policies, the first and most fundamental distinction of which account must be taken is of a political rather than of an economic character: It is based on the difference in location of the tariff making authority. This authority lies primarily either with the home government or with the administration of the colonies individually. Complete fiscal control has been granted only to the self-governing Dominions of the British Empire. That the British self-governing Dominions at present all impose protective duties and grant preferential rates to a part or to all of the British Empire is significant but incidental: The fundamental fact is that they are free to determine their own tariff policies; in regard to them Great Britain can be said to have had in recent decades only a negative tariff policy."

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In respect to all the other British colonies and to all the colonies. of other powers, tariff policies are in greater or less degrees subject to the control of the home governments. Not alone the policy, but even the rates, may be prescribed by the national legislative assembly (assimilated colonies); or by royal decree (Spanish colonies); or they may be determined locally subject to vetoes (Philippines, some British Crown colonies); or subject to general restrictions, such as that the preference to the home country shall not be less than a certain amount (Portuguese colonies, charter of Rhodesia) or subject

63 Or they are renewals or revisions of such treaties made after the establishment of the protectorate, e. g.. the treaties of Egypt and those relating to Morocco. Compare the treaty, United States-Tonga, denounced in 1920 by Great Britain, which now holds a protectorate over that group.

64 The treaty of Berlin, 1885, was officially unrelated to territorial questions, but nevertheless the connection was intimate. The treaty of 1904, which provided for freedom of transit across certain British and French colonies into Egypt and Morocco, respectively, was part of the general settlement of all outstanding questions which inaugurated the entente cordiale between Great Britain and France.

65 Except Newfoundland.

66 The policy has been not to interfere further than to see to it that the Dominions observed such most-favored nation treaties as were binding upon them as part of the Empire, and that they did not discriminate against the United Kingdom; and further, the policy was, until 1919, to grant no preferential rates to colonial products.

to restrictions imposed upon the mother country by treaty pledges; or they may be promulgated by a governor who is subject to orders from the colonial office (Italian colonies and many of the British Crown colonies).

ECONOMIC.

In recent decades conflicts of public opinion over tariff policies have dealt almost exclusively with the range and the rates of import duties the question of adopting protection or of increasing or decreasing its extent. In this respect, as in others, the British selfgoverning Dominions have shown their resemblance to independent nations rather than to dependencies. But in these Dominions and in Great Britain for the last score of years a second question-though it was frequently rather another phase of the same question-has divided the attention of those who concerned themselves with tariff policies, namely, the question of the extent to which and the conditions under which preferential rates should be granted to the products of other portions of the empire. The center of the controversy has been the tariff relations between Great Britain and the Dominions; and as both mother country and the Dominions have consistently refused to consider their tariff relations a matter for bargaining, the discussion in each territory has dealt simply with the import duties to be imposed in its jurisdiction. In the Dominions and Great Britain, as in other mother countries, the tariff policy relative to the dependent colonies has received comparatively little attention; it has been the affair of legislative committees, of the colonial ministry, and of colonial societies, rather than of public opinion..

While metropolitan (national) tariff policies deal almost exclusively with the range and rates of import duty, colonial tariff policies must give consideration to: First, the import duties imposed in the colonies; second, the export duties commonly employed in the colonies; and, third, the duties, if any, imposed on colonial products in the home market. Minor features, important in some cases, are the duties on intercolonial trade, transit duties, shipping restrictions, and additional or supplementary duties such as octrois and municipal taxes. The French octrois de mer and other consumption duties are relatively important, and considerable attention will be given them in the chapter of this report which deals with the Colonial Tariff Policy of France. The scope of this report does not require attention to municipal taxes collected in single ports or to pilotage and other minor fees, but in a number of places these have been referred to in so far as they contain preferential features. Transportation restrictions directly connected with tariffs, such as the limitation of preferential rates to merchandise transported in national ships or to goods transported directly have, of course, been given attention.

TYPES OF COLONIAL TARIFF POLICIES.

Current practices disclose the prevalence of three types of tariff policy: The policy of tariff assimilation, the policy of preferential

67 This is not true of the relations of the Dominions among themselves.

tariff treatment without tariff assimilation, and the policy of the "open door." These may be distinguished primarily according to the treatment accorded to national as compared with or contrasted with foreign products seeking to enter the colonial market. At a later point all the various elements of the colonial tariff policies will be taken up more in detail under headings respectively appropriate. (See pp. 43-70.)

(1) Policy of tariff assimilation.-When the rates of duty of the tariff of the mother country are enforced also in the colony, the trade between these two units being free; that is, where mother country and colony form essentially a customs union, the tariff policy which prevails is that of assimilation. Typical instances appear in the practice of France, in that of the United States in reference to Porto Rico, and in that of Japan in Formosa. In the tariffs of these countries the schedules of duties are framed primarily for the purpose of protecting the domestic manufacturer in the home market; and these schedules are extended to the colonies for the purpose of holding the colonial market for the producers of the mother country. Conditions in the colonies may be utterly different from those in the mother country, but colonial interests have little or no direct representation in the national legislatures and the cover of the blanket of protection is not apt to be extended to them. In some cases, however, the national legislature imposes duties for the special benefit of colonial products. Such, for instance, is the French duty on rice.68 Free entry of national products into the market of the colony has its logical concomitant in free entry of colonial products into the mother country. This reciprocal favor granted by the mother country is, however, not ordinarily an equivalent favor. Colonial products are chiefly raw materials, and raw materials usually enter importing countries free or at low rates of duty. Hence colonial products usually meet small barriers or none in foreign countries, and are protected in the market of the mother country by small duties or none. Consequently, free entry to this market is not as valuable to the colonial products as is free entry to the protected markets of the colonies to the industrial products of the mother country. There are, however, certain important commodities which are largely exported by various colonies-for instance, sugar, coffee, tobacco, and cocoa-which are usually taxed by the mother country for revenue purposes, and their free admission may give to such colonial products a decided advantage.69

But the advantage may be of almost negligible proportions, even though the differential be considerable. These products are world staples, with well-established grades, qualities, and prices; the import duties upon them are normally charged to the consumers, and the benefit which a differential affords to the colonist is not greatexcept for the important assurance of favorable treatment in a known market-unless the market of the mother country can absorb

es Again, the protective tariff of the mother country may contribute to building up an industry in the colony also-thus, the French tariff treatment of textiles and the growth of the cotton industry in Indo-China.

Contrariwise, fiscal considerations may prevent the granting of the colonial product of the entire remission of the duty, as in France, especially before 1914, or as in the preferential rates of the United Kingdom. On the other hand, these duties are frequently Sufficiently high so that a partial remission constitutes an effective preference.

the whole colonial product and more. For, if the buyers for the home market have to pay the open-market price plus the higher duty on the part of the supply they can afford to pay the same total price to the colonists, assuming an equality of freight and other costs. Unless there is a combination among these buyers, the price in the colonial market under these conditions is likely to go close to the world price plus the differential. If, however, the colonists can sell only a part of their product in the home market, the ruling price for all of it will be close to the world price, less the freight to the dominant market.

(2) Preferential tariff policy.-The largest tariff preferences, which are granted at the present time, are found in the trade between countries and their assimilated colonies. Assimilation is, therefore, the most extreme preferential policy," but for convenience the use of the terms preferential policy and preferential or differential tariffs is here restricted to those tariff systems in which tariff assimilation is absent, but lesser degrees of tariff favors are granted. A preferential tariff system in this narrower usage may then be defined as one in which the mother country and the colony have different tariffs and in which there is partial or entire exemption from duty for the trade in one or both directions. Occasionally rates adopted in the tariff of a colony are higher than those in the mother country, but except in the case of the colonies of free-trade Great Britain such higher rates are found only sporadically and on a few items." Occasionally also the rates on certain articles are the same either through coincidence or by design.72 Normally, however, the rates are lower than, and are imposed without reference to, those of the mother countries.

The existing preferential tariffs may be divided into two types: Those of the British Dominions and those of a considerable number of dependent colonies-the Philippines, various British Colonies, and the colonies of Italy, Spain, and Portugal.73 The British Dominions. are industrial nations pursuing protective-tariff policies and levying high rates of duty upon manufactured goods. These rates are fixed in reference to all competition, including that of Great Britain and the sister Dominions, but there are higher schedules of duties levied upon non-British goods. This represents the actual method of arriving at the rates, but the tariff schedules may have the form of levying certain rates on goods of non-British origin," and granting certain reductions or specified lower rates to British products. Upon a comparatively small number of items dutiable at relatively low rates the differential reduction takes the form of free admission. Generally, however, the base rates are relatively high and the preference is a minor fraction of the rate, from one-fourth to one-half.

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70 But see note on p. 72.

71 Usually in application to commodities for which the colonial tariff has not a detailed classification and to which as a class there is assigned a rate higher than the lowest rate applied in the mother country to the poorer qualities-the differences being recognized in classification-of the same class.

72 In the Philippines and in some of the French colonies some articles have been made dutiable at the same rates as in the mother country to prevent attempts at evading the metropolitan (national) duty by importation by way of the colony.

73 See footnote on p. 713 for the difference in the character of the preferences which Canada grants to Great Britain and to the British West Indies.

74 Except in the earlier grants of preferential rates by Canada to Great Britain, where the preference was designed to operate as a general reduction of duties.

Or of colonies which do not enjoy preferential treatment; the preferences are not in

all cases given to all parts of the Empire. (See pp. 53, 54.)

The mother countries, except Great Britain, have protective tariffs, but the rates in the tariffs of their dependent colonies are levied more largely for revenue and range generally from about 10 to 20 per cent. The differential in favor of the mother country is usually, outside of the British Colonies, the whole or the major part of the duty.7" Preferences in the colonial market are usually accompanied by preferences to colonial products in the home market, but the extent of the two is by no means always comparable. The United States grants free entry to the products of the Philippines, but Portugal gives Angola the benefit of but 50 per cent reduction compared with a preference in the latter of 90 per cent, and Italy has so far given Libia no tariff favors whatever.

(3) The "open-door" policy.-It may be that in the tariff of a colony no distinction is made between the products of the mother country and those of other countries. The policy there prevailing is that of the "open door." The principle of the open door is not to be confused with free trade; it implies simply equal terms of entry for all. In an open-door régime a tariff may be devised either with a view to protection of local industry-as was the case in the selfgoverning Dominions before preferences were granted-or for revenue only, which is the usual case. The rates in open-door tariffs are usually lower than those in either the assimilated or the preferential systems. The colonies of the Netherlands and of Belgium and the majority of the British Crown Colonies have, as all the German colonies had, low rates and no discriminations against foreign trade." Reciprocally, the countries named had granted no favors in the home market to the colonial products until in 1919 Great Britain granted preferential rates upon the limited tariff schedule of the United Kingdom. Where the open door is maintained as an exception from the general national policy, as in the Canary Islands and Spanish Morocco, American Samoa, and some of the French colonies, these colonies 78 receive certain favors in the mother country.

"Free trade" in the strict sense implies absence or approximate absence of any duties. A free-trade régime prevailed in Central Africa before 1890 (though there were export duties) and in India as late as 1894, but it now persists only in a few small areas where the transit trade is predominant-for instance, in Aden, the Straits Settlements, Djibuti, and Melilla. The term "free trade" is fre

76 It may be expressed as a specified part or percentage of it or by separate rates on various items.

Colonial tariff policy of Denmark.-Since the sale of her West Indian Islands and the grant of independence to Iceland, Denmark possesses only the Faroe Islands and Greenland. (Iceland, though it has been "independent" since Dec. 1, 1918, recognizes the King of Denmark as sovereign and conducts its foreign affairs through Denmark.) It has not been thought advisable to include in this report a study of the colonial tariff policy relative to these colonies. It may be said, however, that before the recent diminution of the Danish Empire the earlier discriminations against foreign products had disappeared from the colonial tariffs, but they continued in the tariff of the mother country. Danish shipping received certain favors in the Virgin Islands up to the time of their sale to the United States, but the colonial government was authorized to extend, under certain circumstances, these favors to foreign vessels. Sugar and liquors manufactured in the Danish West Indies from products of those islands paid in Denmark only the amount of internal tax, with a deduction equal to the export duty paid in the West Indies, but not exceeding 5 per cent. Other products or manufactures thereof from these islands paid two-thirds of the usual duty. Articles manufactured from the raw materials of the remaining colonies continue to enter Denmark free by special provision of the tariff law. Denmark levies few duties upon raw materials and apparently none that affects imports from these colonies; e. g., the only duty on fish is levied on salmon, trout, sardines, and spiced anchovies.

78 With two exceptions among the French colonies.

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