The Press MONDAY, FEBRUARY 17, 1964. Trade With The United States

Press, Volume CIII, Issue 30367, 17 February 1964, Page 10

The Press MONDAY, FEBRUARY 17, 1964. Trade With The United States

A recent speech by the United States Ambassador (Mr Herbert B. Powell) at the Auckland Rotary Club on the trade balance between the United States and New Zealand has special significance because of the pending visit of an American selling mission. We are in substantial agreement with nearly everything in the report of Mr Powell’s speech (though, according to our calculations, the balance in New Zealand’s favour from 1958 to 1962 was less than £7O million, not £lOO million). Particularly reassuring was his statement that the United States did not seek to use the imbalance of trade between New Zealand and the United States as a bargaining point. The United States did not subscribe to a bilateral balancing of trade, he said, as that was merely disruptive of world trade. This wise statement may be contrasted with the oftheard argument that New Zealand should “ force ” Australia to reduce its favourable trade balance with New Zealand. It would, of course, still be good business for New Zealand to buy more from the United States and less from Australia if we could land the same (or comparable) goods here for much the same price from the two countries. This would, incidentally, strengthen New Zealand’s hand in dealing with the “farm lobby" in

Washington. By an odd coincidence, on the same day that Mr Powell spoke in Auckland an American congressman said he had an assurance that the United States Government “hoped “to announce in the near “ future a reduction of beef “ imports from Australia “and New Zealand”. Prospects for increasing trade between New Zealand and the United States and —less certainly—of reducing our surplus, are good. The value of trade in each direction has more than doubled in the last decade. Trade between the two countries was restricted in the early post-war years by the scarcity of dollar currencies. The discriminatory devices adopted then throughout the sterling area were finally abolished in New Zealand only last year. Twenty years of discrimination against the dollar have set trading patterns that sadly handicap the American exporter to New Zealand. But he may have attractive offers to make. For instance, has the Wheat Committee in recent years considered the prospects of importing some of our wheat requirements from the United States, instead of buying them all from Australia? Or, for that matter, has the Government used the right it obtained four years ago to reduce Commonwealth preferences to give New Zealand an easier trading relationship with the United States?