Abstract

"“Buffalo is also a strategic point”: The Imperial Economic Conference of 1932 and the Canadian Great Lakes Grain Trade"

M. Stephen Salmon, Canadian Business History Association (steamer26@live.ca)

Before 1932, the port of Buffalo, NY was key in the export chain of the world’s largest wheat exporter, Canada. This paper will analyse how the imposition of a British preferential tariff on wheat sealed the port’s fall to secondary status in the global grain trade. The collapse was the result of the effects of the Ottawa Agreements reached at the Imperial Economic Conference in 1932. Economic historians have argued that the tariff was not large enough to protect Imperially sourced wheat from competition. While preference may not have been enough to shield Canadian (or Australian) grain exports to Britain, it did have a positive impact for Canadian Great Lakes shipowners in the Great Depression.

Buffalo’s future place in the global grain trade had been under threat since the start of construction on the Welland Ship Canal in 1913. When the Depression hit the U.S. steel industry hard in 1930, American shipowners began tying up their ships further undermining the city’s status as a grain entrepot. The preferential tariff’s regulations sealed Buffalo’s fate because it virtually closed down transhipment through U.S. ports of Canadian wheat destined for the British market. Canadian shipowners took advantage of the opportunity presented by the rerouting of wheat cargoes to Montreal and other Canadian ports. Their increased collective earnings were undoubtedly a major factor in saving the Canadian Great Lakes shipping industry from complete collapse during the Great Depression. The Imperial wheat preference may not have increased western Canadian farmers’ incomes but by the mid-Buffalo’s place in the global grain economy had been taken over by a host of smaller Canadian ports.