Divergence From Britain:Australia's Trade Policy 1930s To 1970s

State involvement in the management of international economic relations became more intense during the 20~thh century.Britain and Australia,which shared the same interest in maintaining the export markets and conserving dollars,signed the Ottawa Agreement in1932 in times of great uncertainty.However,as their perception of economic interests began to diverge in the 1950s,Canberra and London were driven apart by their changing views of development priorities,and the evolving commercial and financial incentives.Finally,with Britain's growing entanglement in European economic integration and Australia's changing direction and composition of trade,both countries retreated gradually from the Commonwealth.This study focuses on the shift of Australian trade policy from the 1930s to the 1970s,during which the gradually diverged paths between Australia and Britain manifested themselves.An economic analysis of Canberra's trade will be first presented,which explains the reasons why the country has enjoyed its advantages in developing the primary sectors and illustrates the performance during the past century.A theoretical analysis concerning economic conceptions and related theories has been conducted.Second,a detailed examination of Australia's changing policy-making between the1930s and the 1970s has been made.The focus of this section includes the formation of Imperial Preference System,different economic priorities between Canberra and London,the emergence of new outlets and mineral resources in the 1950s-60s,the changing attitudes of London towards the European economic integration and British application for the membership of European Economic Community(EEC).Historical analysis has been applied with the help of documentary books which record related documents in detail.Third,lessons generated from the analyses are presented in the last section,and it is expected that these lessons could be helpful to understand and resolve the issues related to trade policies.As is believed by the author that the trade policy contains not only public but also private interests,research in this paper has been endeavoured to include both the economic analyses and the political implications.Attention has been placed specifically to the linkages between economic policy and employment,priorities granted to the primary sectors or manufacturing industry.Through the research,it has been found that trade policies introduced by Canberra regarded not only the economic benefits,but also the necessity of securing the employment and developing the national defence.For instance,despite the Ottawa Agreement signed with Britain in 1932 which discriminated all the trade relations with any countries outside the Commonwealth,Canberra still chose to expand its export markets and participated in the international mechanism led by the United States.Besides,Britain itself even took the initiative to loosen the import controls and engaged more actively with the rest of the world.Moreover,the importance of national security was always placed in front of the economic benefits,which was proved to be true through Canberra's reluctance to consent to Tokyo's proposal for a Pacific economic community.Moreover,a country's trade would become stabilized only when the integrated development of all the economic industries could be achieved,along with the diversified trading markets and cooperation on both bilateral and multilateral bases.With regard to this idea,Canberra verified it initially by its experience of developing the manufacturing industry after the Second World War.Considering that the national defence needed to be strengthened to resist any possible aggression,more immigrants should be welcomed while the government took the responsibility to secure a full employment at the same time.If the development of manufacturing was regarded as a quick response or a proper way to avoid the unemployment situation shortly after the war,a long-term strategy of maintaining the full employment should be understandable.In addition,the prosperity of Australian economy in the 1960s proved the importance of diversified trading outlets and participation in both bilateral and multilateral cooperation.