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Of equal importance with all this was a formal agreement by Canada not to use certain powers under her tariff laws to value imported goods at arbitrarily high prices, a practice that has done as much as high tariffs to discourage U. S. trade. Finally the Mackenzie King Government promised to sponsor a bill in the Canadian Parliament to permit Canadian tourists in the U. S. to take home duty free $100 worth of U. S. goods.
U. S. Concessions. The tariff concessions given by the U. S. to Canada affect 53 items. Chief are: one-third to one-half off the duty on cattle, a reduction limited however to 155,799 heavy beef cattle, 51,933 calves less than 175 lb. each, and 20,000 dairy cattle per year; a 20% to 40% cut for 750,000 bu. a year of seed potatoes; 43% off for 1,500,000 gal. a year of cream; half off on halibut; $2.50 instead of $5 per gallon on whiskey aged four years or more in the wood; half off on lumber with an annual limitation to 250,000,000 board feet on Douglas fir and western hemlock. In addition, the U. S. agreed to keep on the free list wood pulp and newsprint, crude asbestos, wood shingles (with limitations), lobsters, telegraph poles, undressed mink, beaver, muskrat and wolf skins, nickel ore, cobalt and quahaugs. Other items on which the U. S. duty was reduced: electric cooking stoves, lacrosse sticks, swordfish (if not frozen), eels, chubs, saugers and tullibees, pipe organs for churches, ice skates, alewives in bulk, rutabagas and polymerized or unpolymerized vinyl acetate.
Who Won? Prime Minister King and Secretary Hull each looked as if he had swallowed a canary as each tried to keep from appearing too pleased when the other was around. For each thought he had got the better of the bargain, and each had reason for thinking so. Mr. King could say with truth that his concessions had amounted to little but a reduction of Canadian tariffs to the level they were at in 1929.
Secretary Hull could chuckle to himself that a good many of his concessions did no more than restore the pre-Hoover tariff, that many (notably lumber, cattle and potatoes) had been so limited by quotas to a tiny fraction of U. S. consumption, that they would have little if any unsettling influences. Moreover the articles which the U. S. agreed to keep on the free list included newsprint (on which the U. S. Press would never let a tariff be imposed) and a number of things of which the U. S. has far from enough (e. g. asbestos, cobalt, lobsters). In return he had obtained a better market for U. S. machinery of many kinds, for several fruits and vegetables and got rid of a number of annoying hindrances to U. S. marketing in Canada.
U. S. farmers in general might carp a little that they had received few substantial gains but such gains were hardly to be expected in a treaty with an agricultural country. But Florida fruit growers, who have threatened to attack the reciprocal tariff law in the courts because of fruits and vegetables admitted under the recent trade treaty with Cuba, may now think twice since the new treaty betters their citrus fruit market in Canada.