Gnome dumping

Press, Volume CXV, Issue 33963, 2 October 1975, Page 14

Gnome dumping

The pitfalls of trade with Communist countries came home to the West Germans recently when 250,000 gnomes crossed the border from East Germany and threatened to undermine the garden ornament industry in the Federal Republic. The gnome dumping was said to be the latest move in a series of bitter exchanges about trade between the two German Governments. Moscow Radio turned the incident into an opportunity to accuse the West German politicians of hostility towards a detente with the Communist bloc. But, according to “ The Times ”, of London, the firm of Heissner, in Hesse, the largest manufacturers of gnomes in West Germany, remained unperturbed. Heissner said the Communist gnomes were an inferior product, made from old moulds that dated back to the days before the Second World War when they had a branch themselves in the East The answer to the invasion, said Heissner, was to produce superior gnomes, which the company was already doing. The Communist invaders, however cheaply they were dumped, simply would not be able to compete in the hard world of capitalist enterprise. The New Zealand Export-Import Corporation, questing about in China for suitable products to bring to New Zealand in exchange for this country’s increased sales of primary products there, should take note. <A market would be hard to find for a quarter of a million busts of Chairman Mao.