PRODUCTION AND TARIFFS.

Auckland Star, Volume LXII, Issue 166, 16 July 1931, Page 6

PRODUCTION AND TARIFFS.

PLEA FQR FREE TRADE,

(To the Editor.)

In the "Star" of the 10th inst. we find tables issued by the department of econoinica of Canterbury College, showing how times have changed since 1914, for the purchasing-" nower of the farmer, based on export prices and farm casts, is now only sixty per cent of the same in 1914. Of course, this is put down to the present world trade depression, vet we find quite a logical explanation for the difference. During . the past seventeen years we have gradually increased our protective, Customs tariff until to-day we find that even against the sole market for our produce in England the duty averages approximately twenty per cent. The English manufacturer to exist must sell his goods, and therefore • t.» overcome this barrier against him he has been compelled to reduce his production costs, •md therefore income, by an equal amount. Naturally, the cost of his requirements, including foodstuffs, must fall in sympathy, and tins accounts for the present low price for butter and wool. Then, again, all prices in New Zealand, including our own manufactures, have risen in sympathy with the duties, and therefore the farmer's supplies have been increased a similar amount, while his necessiI ties from other countries have risen to a much eater extent, with the .result that his marSin of profit has been reduced considerably. The fall in selling prices of twenty per cent, added to a rise in costs of twenty per cent, lowers his net income by forty per cent. By similar deductions it could be shown that our protective tariff, which is low in comparison with those of the rest of the world, is the cause of a unemployment, over-production, unequal distribution of goods, loss of revenue' and high cost of living, and bears out the statements made at a recent congress of the International Chambers of Commerce, held'at Washington, where speakers representing, South America, Europe and Japan held fast to the belief that the countries of the world have moved to shut out competitive goods in the interests of protecting their own manu- • fartures, and that tariff walls, which all nations are building, are amongst the worldwide depression fundamentals. Let us' contemplate the possibility of the Mother' > Land following our example and protecting her own margarine and artificial; silk industries against, the competition from imported butter and wool, and we will then f . realise the cause of the present depression.NEW ZEALAND MAID.