IMPORTS AND EXPORTS.

Auckland Star, Volume LX, Issue 225, 23 September 1929, Page 4

IMPORTS AND EXPORTS.

HOW THEY BALANCE. AN AMERICAN VIEW. Apropos of the new American tariff, Mr. Geo. E. Qucsenberry, editor oE "The American Automobile," goes to considerable pains, in a recent article, to show that despite an excess of about a billion dollars of merchandise exports last year to all countries of the world and despits the payment of the United States of an approximate two hundred millions gold on war debts, the American position in 1928 was practically that of an even balance. In other words, the outgo of currency almost balanced the income. The exact figures of the Government Department of Commerce, boiled down to theh essentials, show that in a total of, roughly, 4,500,000,000 dollars, the balance favourable to America was forty millions gold. Thai is, slightly less than one-tenth of 1 per cent.

The -writer names many countries which sell very much more to than they buy from the United States, but he describes what he terms "triangulated trade," which offsets the apparent direct trade poeition. Diamonds, for instance, are not supplied to the United States direct from South Africa., but rather from Europe. Accordingly American wealth poured uot for precious stonee filters its way back to South Africa through one or more European countries. The same is true of Australian and New Zealand wool which, exported to England, is there fabricated and finally shipped, in great quantity as woollen textiles, to America for clothing, as many Americans believe rightly or wrongly that English wool fabrics are superior.

It is remarked that if thia wool went to America direct from Australia or New Zealand, the poeition of America's trade with Australia would apparently be improved, a trade which, on the face of it, is admitted to be eadly misbalanced. On the other hand, by fabricating the wool in England, several things result highly favourable to Australia or New Zealand, and the British Empire. There is the toll of shipping, the wool being almost always carried in British ehips, and the employment given to textile workers in Great Britain, who thus are enabled to buy more heavily of New Zealand butter, Australian wheat, meats, etc. If the raw wool were snipped direct to America, thus to improve the apparent American position in Australia, it would be fabricated by American workmen who would not be buyers of Australian and New Zealand food and other products.