ABSTRACT
The principal achievement of the Second National Government was the introduction of a system of Protection in Britain; and it is claimed that the modest improvement in trade which has taken place during the last three years has been due to this policy. This chapter examines six of the seven claims which were put forward in justification of the protectionist policy of the Second National Government, testing them by the facts and figures of four years. The plain fact is that all these guesswork figures are quite untrustworthy as a basis for calculation. During the whole Free Trade period, if we set against our imports our visible and invisible exports as computed by the Board of Trade, there was always a large "favourable balance", which represented the profit on total foreign trade. They do not refer to the numerous quotas and duties imposed against British trade in 1932 and 1933, as an immediate response to the British tariff policy.
