DEPENDENT AMERICA.

Auckland Star, Volume LXII, Issue 4, 6 January 1931, Page 6

DEPENDENT AMERICA.

The "Index," the organ of the New York Trust Company, ■ has performed a useful service in its October issue by" reminding Americans of their dependence on foreign countries (says the "Christian Science Monitor"). It lists the many raw materials for which the United States relies on the rest of the world. The recital should put a damper on glib talk of American self-sufficiency. It is true that, save possibly for Russia, the United States, is a more nearly self-contained nation economically than any other. Nevertheless, the withdrawal of foreign goods would leave a considerable gap in the satisfaction of American requirements. Thus, of American imports for 1929, amounting to 4,400,000,000 dollars, considerably more than half consisted of commodities which the United States does not produce at all, or which it cannot produce in sufficient quantity to meet the requirements of American industry. The most striking example of lepeudelice, curiously enough, is the industry which is popularly supposed to be the outstanding example of self-sufficiency—steel. In the manufacture of American steel no fewer than forty commodities must be imported, many of them vital constituents. In its automobiles, for instance, America uses vast quantities of nickel from Canada and rubber from Malaya. The tin mined in America is negligible. The list of fibres that must be bought abroad -is equally impressive. Raw silk from Japan, wool from Argentina, long-staple cotton from Egypt, raw jute from India, sisal for making binder twine from Yucatan —these by 110 means exhaust the list. And the long line of tropical goods which susta ns the American standard of living, beginning with fruits and sugar, is seemingly endless. The piatter-of-factness of existence often obscures this interdependence. . It requires a vivid pen to bring it home to the average reader. Francois Delaisi, in his "Political Myths and Economic Realities," has done the trick for France as it might be done for the United-States. He pictures his patriotic Monsieur Durand as going home after a day's activities foreign-coloured in every facet, and falling asleep under "made of Norwegian duck feathers," to dream of France as "decidedly a great country, entirely self-supporting and able to snap her fingers at. the whole world"!.