Partial Discrimination
That clause of the Anglo-American loan agreement which forbids the United Kingdom Government to administer quantitative import restrictions in a discriminatory manner, and which therefore prevents this country from replacing dollar imports for which she is unable to pay with imports from other countries for which she is able to pay, is likely to be avoided—by a legal fiction. The clause is to be applied as if the United Kingdom and the Colonies were one unit. Conse- quently, if the United Kingdom wishes to reduce its imports of American tobacco and to increase its imports of tobacco from the Colonies, it may do so, on the condition that it pretends that the imports from the Colonies are nor imports at all, but mere domestic transfers within a national unit—like a movement of goods between Manchester and London. It only remains to say, in order to com- plete this oictu:e of a commercial madhouse, that similar arrangements with the Dominions are not to be permitted. The ostensible reason for this is that the terms of the agreement could not be twisted to admit of such an arrangement, but a rather more plausible reason is that Mr. Will Clayton, during his visit to London to discuss this matter, said that he would not agree to bring the Dominions into it. It is said that some such relaxation of the terms of the financial agreement will have to take plat: in order to implement the Marshall proposals, since an agreement between the European countries and the United States is ipso facto discriminatory against the rest of the world, and the clause which already makes an exception in the case of war-devastated countries is not quite elastic enough to meet the situation. It is also said that this will have to be done very carefully, because Congress is touchy about any foreign aid at all and might not understand. All this is probably true. In fact, there is no end to the nonsense and confusion which may arise out of the curious American concept of non-discrimination. But no doubt it is too much to hope that Article IX of the loan agreement, which enshrines it, will be scrapped as it deserves to be, and its place taken by a clause saying that, if there must be some overriding test of trade arrangements, let it be the contribution which they make to the prosperity of the world—not a monster from the wilderness of American commercial law like th! " principle " of non-discrimination.
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