TARIFFS AND EXCHANGES.

Auckland Star, Issue 17, 21 January 1932, Page 6

TARIFFS AND EXCHANGES.

A news item just received from Berlin has a very direct bearing on the controversy over high exchange rates in which our primary producers ate now so keenly interested. Germany is to declare subject to special duties all commodities imported from countries whose currencies are now depreciated to gold. This covers the case of Denmark and Britain, and, as the "Daily Express" has pointed out, it applies also to Australia and New Zealand. We cannot blame the Germans for making a special effort to protect themselves against the unfair handicap represented by a depreciated currency. During the p9st-war fall of the mark, when a small amount of gold would exchange for untold wealth in Germany, nearly all the important commercial countries were compelled to readjust their fiscal systems so as to neutralise German competition. But we must realise that such special duties levied on our products would not only deprive New Zealand of any share in the German market, but would inflict even more serious damage upon our primary industries by intensifying the competition in the British market where we already find it difficult to hold our own. This threatened discrimination against our products by Germany has a very important bearing on the exchange question.-. For- it indicates that our farmers are entirely deluded if they imagine that other countries would permit us to get the benefit of a* abnormally high exchange rate without making efforts to protect their markets against us.