What is Dumping?

Press, Volume LVII, Issue 17317, 1 December 1921, Page 6

What is Dumping?

The little dialogue between the Hon; E. P. Lee and a "Wellington manufacturer which we referred to yesterday—the manufacturer, it will be remembered, declared his willingness to ask for the treatment of Britain aB a foreign country if she. can otherwise get /woollen goods into New Zealand —tells us much concerning the outcry against "dumping." Yet there is such a thing as "dumping", of a kind which may justify protective action. Before we explain what that is, it may be as well to call attention to the impression which the usual references to "dumping" are likely, if not designed, to create. Too often "dumping" is spoken of in such a way as to suggest that wicked foreigners load up their ships with goods, and cruise about the seas looking for some unsuspecting country so that they can suddenly—and at dead of night, for preference—dump thousands of tons of \jargo on the shore and steal away, as gleefully as the Wolf when she dumped her mines off Cape Farewell. Foreigners are not so kind or stupid as tins. No goods come into New Zealand without being ordered or without some guarantee that ffiey will be paid for, and they must be paid for either -with goods the production pf which gives employment to New Zealanders or through a pledge to send goods in the future. But.many, simple folk are deceived by the metaphor in the .word "dumping." Metaphor, indeed, has as much to answer for now as when Bastiat wrote his "Sophiemes Economiques" more than 70 years ago. He dealt thus with tiro word."inundation" or "flooding": This word is ordinarily used in a bad souse, for we of ten see our fields injured, and our harvests carried away by floods. If, however, they leave on'our soil 'something or greater value than what they carry away, like the inundations of the Nile, we should be thankful for them, as the Egyptians are. Before we declaim, Jihen, against the inundations of foreign products—before proceeding to restrain them by irkjsome wad costly obstaolesr—we should enquire to what class they belong, and whether they ravage or fertilise. What should we think of Mehemet Ali, if, instead of raising at great cost dams aoross the JNile, to extend wider its inundations, he were to spend his money in digging a deeper channel to prevent Egyptjbeing soiled by the foreign slime which descends upon her from the Mountains of the Moon? We display exactly the same degree of wisdom and sense when we desire, at the cost of millions, to defend our country:—from what? From the benefits which Nature has bestowed on other climates. It can scarcely be urged, and it certainly cannot be maintained, that goods which can be landed here below the local east of production are ipso facto "dumped." Dumping N means the deliberate and organised attempt of foreign producers, or, as is* much more common, a combination of foreign producers, flourishing as they do under the facilities of rings and trusts, which protective tariffs always afford, to flood our markets, regardless of price, with goods which will undermine, and, as they hope, destroy some particular branch of our industry. -That is Mr Asquith's definition, and against such dumping he declared his willingness to take action. But the Anti-Dumping Bill now before Parliament goes beyond that, even in its express provisions; and there is a general provision 'allowing ! tiae Government to alter any duty at 'will. Most of our New Zealand industries are worth preserving, but be- | lore embarking upon the hazardous path '.marked out in the Customs Bill, the Government should clearly demonstrate ( that those industries' are in danger. T .We need hardly say that ; we are in favour of retaliation as a weapon with

which to force down foreign duties in order that the New Zealand duties may come down too.