Tariffs and trade bargaining: anglo-scandinavian economic relations in the 1930s

The British trade agreements programme of the 1930s was a striking example of the power which a major importer can exert over suppliers. After the introduction of full-scale protection in the winter of 1931–2, the UK made a series of treaties with its main suppliers of primary produce, pacts aimed principally at obtaining privileges for British exports. The countries selected for trade negotiations were exclusively exporters of primary products and in no case included a major industrial power. All were unequal partners in the sense that they were far more dependent on the British market than Britain on theirs, and most also ran trade surpluses with the UK. Both these factors, it may be argued, gave the larger power a strong bargaining hand, and this may have been enhanced by relative factor immobility in smaller countries with less diversified economic structures.