GERMANY'S FUTURE TRADE POLICY

Dominion, Volume 10, Issue 2955, 15 December 1916, Page 17

GERMANY'S FUTURE TRADE POLICY

DUMPING AFTER WAR. ; ORGANISED PREPARATIONS. If Allied nations are to successfully combat the trade designs of Germany it is well to know, something of the trade policy of the enemy after peace. On this topic the Exchange Telegraph Company's correspondent at Stockholm writes:— From reliable persons recently back fiom Germany I have received further facts as to the great dumping plau under which Germany, by exporting vast quantities of cheap goods now ready, iB to pay for raw materials and to regain at a bound her lost markets. The dumping organisations arc not complete, and the question is being considered of quickly buying up tonnage when peace comes. In - Westphalia, Saxony, and Bavaria are being formed manufacturers' associations of a. now kind, which will aim at common action and prevent excessive production of some products, or insufficient production of others. They will also

rule certain technical questions and questions of saleability arising out of the changing public taste. Makers of optical, surgical instruments, clectrical machinery and machine tools are all working together. The amount of dump' goods which is considered necessary is distributed for production among different factories ou lines which .eusure economy and division of . labour. The production price, has been cut so low that the 9(J per cent, of sale' value, advanced by the State to enablo production to be carried on, has been reduced. In the campaign of economy factories and workshops are being standardised and specialised." Where two. shops in a given - area formerly produced indiscriminately two classes of goods, one factory lias now taken over altogether one class and the other factory the other class. Sometimes' machinery has toon exchanged. The Berlin readymade clothing and underclothing manufacturers are also preparing. West Russia is the proposed dumping ground, lor men's ready-made clothes. In general the dump preparations work efficiently, and there is 110 doubt that neutral States and, if they allow it, enemy States, will be badly hit by Gorman competition, especially if, as Germans themselves predict, a period of industrial depression follows the war.