The Press Thursday, January 21, 1982. Butter Prices and the New German Tariff.

Press, Volume LXVIII, Issue 20450, 21 January 1932, Page 6

The Press Thursday, January 21, 1982. Butter Prices and the New German Tariff.

A short cable message this morning reports the prediction of the Berlin correspondent of the Daily Express that Germany is about to introduce new tariffs against countries exporting with the advantage of a depreciated currency, particularly Great Britain and Denmark; and attention is drawn to the possible damaging effect of this upon Australia and New Zealand, both in restricting their German markets and in exposing them to keener competition at Home. The connexion of course is there. If the new tariffs shut out New Zealand wool and fruit from Germany, the direct loss will be considerable. If they shut out Danish butter and large Danish supplies are emptied upon the British market, the consequent recession of prices must injure the Dominion, which could be protected only by extending the provisions of the Abnormal Imports Act. Such a situation would embarrass the British Government, which has carefully exoluded essential foodstuffs from its emergency tariff measures and has strong reasons to deter it from taking specific tariff action against Denmark. But the German tariff has not been announced yet, and it is going too fast, and against reason, to expect it to be ruthlessly exclusive in purpose and effect. Germany does not want to cut off her wool supplies, or to raise the price of them against herself; nor does she want to do without butter. A butter tariff may very well be of the counter-vailing type, intended, not to shut out cheap and plentiful supplies, but to save the German dairymen from disastrously low prices. The Reich last year resorted to almost desperate measures to save agriculture from collapse, and did as much harm as good with them; but the important fact to note is that the prices of milk, butter, cattle, and pigs—of all farm products, in fact, except corn—were falling heavily, and this is the best key to the new tariff in so far as it is imposed upon food imports. The Government has been empowered Binee December Ist, by presidential decree, to vary ruling import duties by decree, "in case of " urgent economic necessity," and until the Reichstag meets on February 23rd. " Urgent economic necessity " no doubt exists; but it is difficult to imagine the kind of necessity which would force her to close her channels to the 840,000,000 kroner worth of Danish imports [1929 figure], or to the high percentage of agricultural produce in it, and divert the" stream into the British market.