NEED FOR NEW EXPORT MARKETS FOR N.Z. SEEN

Press, Volume XCI, Issue 27637, 19 April 1955, Page 14

NEED FOR NEW EXPORT MARKETS FOR N.Z. SEEN

“The Press" Special Service

HAMILTON, April 18. A plea to businessmen to regard international trade agreements as aids to increasing trade rather than devices for protection was made today by the president of the Associated Chambers of Commerce of Nev? Zealand (Mr J. Boyd-Clark) in his address to the annual conference. He emphasised the need for New Zealand to seek new markets for its primary produce, and claimed that private enterprise was best fitted for this task. “New Zealand’s economic fortunes are more dependent on her overseas trade than those of almost any other country, and no other member of the sterling area is so dependent on that area for international trade,” said Mr Boyd-Clark.

“Even countries with more balanced economies also depend heavily on foreign trade. Exports amount in recent years—as a proportion of national income—to 21 per cent, for Britain, 26 per cent, for Canada and also the Netherlands, 27 per cent, for Denmark, 21 per cent, for Australia and for New Zealand 37 per cent. On that figure we cannot emphasise too heavily the importance of trade to us. “Except in very rare instances, trade and commerce have always been the greatest movers towards peace in the world. The more movement and individual contacts between businessmen all over the world, the more the worst

of national problems come to be mutually understood and ironed out, and the greater are our chances of peaceful understanding among nations. The sniritless and soul-less trading atmosphere ’ in Government-to-Government or organisational commerce is of no real help toward this understanding. “New Zealand’s export trade is inclined to have too many eggs in one basket, and in some commodities wider markets are urgently needed to spread the risks and ensure against failure in any one market to earn currencies that will purchase badly-needed goods.

“Therefore, is not our first urgent requirement the complete freedom of marketing? There is unbounded truth in a phrase coined by the United States Chamber of Commerce: ‘Free markets make free men.’ “In this country we have a lot of people who lack faith in the ability of free market forces to guide production and determine prices. An occasional surplus of a commodity 'As too often taken as being evidence of plenty or over-supply, when, in fact, it is

really evidence of either misdirected production or very bad distribution and marketing.

“In 1953 we sold only £5,250,000 of our goods to the Middle and Near East as against £204,000,000 to the United Kingdom, Western Europe and the United States, whereas Japan alone, due largely to restrictions on her trade within the sterling area, has, on the latest figures available, commenced trade with Communist China at the rate of £10,000,000 a year. It cannot be said that China has so far shown much friendship towards our Empire and Commonwealth and all that they stand for. . . .

“There is general satisfaction when such countries as Japan come here to buy our wool, livestock, etc., but goods can only be bought if the buyers can sell something in exchange, and that, without an immediate squeal going up that anyone who can sell more cheaply than we can make is creating unfair competition and should be barred. The tariff is the only fair minded method of adjustment—that is what it is there for. I do appeal to you as commercial men of all sections, to study (and to do so in an unbiased manner) the long-term benefits to everyone in New Zealand of a much wider and ever-widening overseas market. “The international agreements, some of which we are members of, and some of which we regrettably coldshoulder, are designed to be used, and can only be successfully used ft the members and all others concerned play an open game. The whole principle of such organisations as the International Monetary Fund and the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade is to create world progress in living standards and trade, and to discipline those countries whose behaviour endangers this progress. “Increased world trade is an increased prospect for world peace, and as such it must be part of our duty to do our utmost within the orbit of these organisations to make them work to the general benefit. No trading group of people in the world is in a better position than the British Commonwealth and Empire, handling as it does more than a third of the world’s trade, to achieve a sensible application of the principles of these international organisations. This can only be done if we use them as a weapon to fight with, a tool to work with, and not as a wall or fence to protect the timid and inefficient.”