TRADING WITH JAPAN

Press, Volume XCI, Issue 27591, 23 February 1955, Page 7

TRADING WITH JAPAN

VIEWS OF BRITISH MANUFACTURER The controller of 16 Lancashire textile mills with 6000 workers which turn out 1,250,000 yards of cloth a week does not believe it is in the best interests of New Zealand or Britain when New Zealand buys Japanese* textiles. He is Mr Cyril Lord, a millionaire at 44, who is on a nine-day business visit to New Zealand. In an interview in Christchurch, Mr Lord said that if any part of the British Commonwealth had to trade with Japan—and he realised that Japan had to buy wool from New Zealand—he thought it should confine its purchases to such items as capital equipment which was in short supply in Britain.

Proclaiming himself a fervent advocate of Commonwealth trade, Mr Lord said Britain should take all New Zealand’s primary produce “automatically,” and that in return New Zealand should “buy British” in preference to goods from any other countries. Reminded that prices for New Zealand dairy produce in Britain had recently been falling, Mr Lord said he considered it very “short-sighted” of Britain to pare down the prices paid to New Zealand. “Britain is now doing business with the Argentine again; and the way Argentina took us for a ride when we really needed their meat is something that should not be forgotten.” Returning to the subject of Japanese trade with the Commonwealth, Mr Lord said that at the time Japan was complaining she could not pay her way in trade with the Commonwealth she had a 900,000,000-dollar credit “Instead of Japan paying the sterling area in dollars we granted her a credit for her deficit ana encouraged more Japanese imports,” he said. Through American intervention the Japanese textile industry had built up from 1,300,000 spindles to 8,500,000 spindles since the war, said Mr Lord. This had increased the Drice of cotton to all manufacturers and had encouraged the expansion of Japanese exports. “The Americans are always talking of the Communist menace, but I don’t 'think we in the British Commonwealth take them very seriously. The Americans don’t understand the British Commonwealth, though, and never will.. .. Big business in America runs the Government; in Britain there is net the same pressure.”