BRITISH GOODS AMERICAN MARKET

Press, Volume LXXXVI, Issue 26031, 7 February 1950, Page 4

BRITISH GOODS AMERICAN MARKET

FIGHT FOR DOLLARS

[By WILLIAM H. STRINGER, Chief of the London News Bureau of the "Christian Science Monitor"! (Reprinted by Arrangement)

London, January 24.—The dogged but losing battle which two British electrical firms have waged in trying to persuade the American city of Seattle to accept their low bids for electrical equipment is regarded here as pin-pointing the difficulties of breaking into the dollar market. Or, to pul it another way, of trying to eliminate the dollar gap by selling British goods to the United States —as worthily suggested by Chancellor of the Exchequer Sir. Stafford Cripps, Economic co-operation Administrator Paul G, Hoffman, et al. . . Britain is having sufficient immediate success in selling its traditional goods to the United States and Canada, including woollens and china. But when Britain enters a new field of competition, its troubles begin. Test Case The Dollar Export Board here regards the Seattle bid as something of a test case for British exporters. The Lancashire firm of Ferranti, Ltd., put in a bid of £71,000 (nearly 200,000 dollars) lower than the lowest American bidder. The British Electric Company’s bid also was lower than those of American competitors. But Seattle has rejected the British proffer on the contestable ground that it does not fit the city’s specifications—although the Ferranti firm and British Electric both were ready to revise specifications. It would be easy to draw from this the conclusion, discouraging for British firms, that Americans will, put up a withering crossfire of unfair competition against any enterprising British firm which heeds the exhortations of the E.C.A. and British Board of Trade and attempts to land on an American beachhead. Take the motor-cycle trade. Recently a light-weight British motor-cycle made a record trip across the United States and back. But, according to British manufacturers, the story of the feat carried in the American press failed wholly to mention that it was a British machine. . . t * British firms say this is not cricket and wonder if the influence of the* American cycle trade led- to the glaring 'omission. _ On the other hand, the director of exports for the Triumph motor-cycle manufacturing firm here says he has had the most cordial relations with American competitors and has encountered no lack of fair pto in marketing his machines m the unitea States or Canada. In another export field, British toy manufacturers have been refused ex-

hibition space at the New York annual Toy Fair in March. Moreover, leading toy trade magazines have refused to accept British advertisement The editor of one of these nas eS plained that the advertising ban resulted from a long-standing rule adopted lo discourage the sale of Japanese and German products. The British Toys Export Group in London does not, however, see these bans as necessarily unfair discrimination. A spokesman points out that British toy journals do not accept foreign advertisements, either. Some British toy manufacturers are responding to the Board of Trade’s in. vitation to book space at the Interna* tional Trade Fair in Chicago next autumn. Several toy firms also have developed their own exhibitions or export sales organisations in New York. Beyond all such factors rise the high United States tariff handicaps—tariff on metal toys is 70 per cent.—and high costs of distribution. Moreover, some United States firms, whose glance seldom extends beyond American shores, are awakening with alarm to the fact that foreign goods actually are entering the American market. They are discovering that this business of vigorous competition, which they have lauded as the American way of life and prescribed for foreign lands, is a rather rigorous bird when it comes home to roost. No Easy Task An American textile journal tells of the “feeling of misgiving” aroused as more woollens and worsteds begin to arrive from Britain. One firm in a good fire-eating advertisement calls it a “menace to the American standard of living.” No one expected that penetration of somebody else’s sales preserve would be easy, whether it was a British venture in the United States or a Belgian export drive in France. But it usually produces some healthy stirrings, efficiency drives, and readjustments. To officials here, Seattle’s refusal to accept the British electrical bid does seem unfortunate. And as for reports that the low bids were rejecteq because British firms were unsuited to contend with the mountainous terrain, or because broken apparatus could not be repaired quickly, the British Electric Comnany spokesman says: “We’ve" installed equipment all over the world and have built power stations in South Africa, • New Zealand, Japan, India, and elsewhere and never have any difficulty , in servicing them anywhere.”