PROTECTION PREFERENCE

Evening Post, Volume CIII, Issue 144, 21 June 1922, Page 6

PROTECTION PREFERENCE

.In view of the increasing demand for a greater degree of protection for, secondary industries that are economically suited to New Zealand, there was some notion that the Prime Minister and the Minister of Customs might, have said something on /the subject when they were entertained yesterday by the New Zealand Association of British Manufacturers and Agents. It is true that the encouragement of New Zealand manufacturers is not a subject in which British manufacturers are directly concerned; but 'British manufacturers are broad-minded, and the fact that the Prime Minister did make a reference to the subject is proof that he did not regard it as taboo on such, an occasion. His reference, however, was in terms so general as to add little or nothing to the J practical consideration of the question of increased protection. He affirmed the" principle, so far as it concerns manufactures based on New Zealand's primary products, in the following terms :—- | Wliile we are endeavouring to do something for the, Empire I think it is only right that we should remember our own country. We in New Zealand are sending away large quantities of raw materials,' and we are getting back part of our own materials in the form of manufactured goods. I should like to , see this country using more of its own j wool, for example, for its own purposes. I might say the same with regard J to hemp, tallow, and a number of other { things that we export. There iare a vast number of commodities that cannot be manufactured in this country, or. that will not -be manufactured here during the next hundred years, so far as it is possible for us to judge at the present time. If we cannot manufacture them in our own country, then the nest best thing is to purchase them from the people who buy the commodities that we produce—that i#, from the British people. In short', the Prime Minister admits that it is anomalous that the wool and'tallow of a country that ! grows wool and tallow should be sent from that country back to that country, in manufactured, form, I via an antipodean factory; and that the anomaly should not remain. This expression of Prime Ministerial opinion will not be J translated into tariff terms unless the manufacturers make a much stronger appeal to public opinion than they have done in the past. But they may already take heart to say that the Prime Minister's utterance is more helpful to them than Farmers' Union demands for free-trade everywhere except in grain-growing. We say above that British manufacturers are broad-minded; and so, we think, are New Zealand manufacturers. The British manufacturer does not demand a mar-ket-dominance that will keep this country for all time in,a condition" of primary production; and the New Zealand manufacturer does nob demand a protective tariff that will give him a monopoly, of the homo mat'fcab at iha expense of I tiie consumer. It is because neither

of these manufacturing interests— the Dominion interest and the Motherland interest—is pushed to an extreme, that both may be made to dovetail. If extreme Courses were followed, intra-Im-perial preference would he incompatible with Dominion protection; and yet, as anyone may see, each is possible in degree. In the Old Country, preferential treatment of < Dominion products is criticised, in some quarters, on the ground that it either means taxation of British food, or, if not, that it is useless to the Dominions. But it is a fact that the Mother Country may give —and does give—a beneficial preference to British Dominions in other ways than by tariff—for instance, by providing capital and labour, men and money, ihtraImperial migration and, the financial basis thereof. As to Customs preference, even if it remain onesided, the bread we cast upon the waters returns to us. The Chancellor of the Exchequer, Sir Koberfc Home, is reported to-day as saying that preference has increased trade between the Dominions and the Motherland—which utterance presumably means not only' that Dominion tariff-prefer-ence has helped to increase Dominion importations of British manufactures, but that, as the Dominions pay in goods, the Motherland takes in return more of our products; and thus the preference that the Dominions give helps to increase in the first place the Motherland's exports, and in the second place helps to> increase1 their own exports. Who shall say that such tariff-preference, reciprocally : applied by the Motherland, is impossible? But United Kingdom duties remain a United Kingdom matter. No friend of the Empire wishes to see a tariff that either injures the Dominion manufacturer or restricts the food supply 'of the JJnited Kingdom worker. .

! A policy of encouraging manufacturers naturally works along the lines of primary production; that is to say, it looks to those products mentioned by the Prime Minister. It will cut into imports of foreign origin with'less compunction than it will cut into imports of British origin. . The reason is that foreign countries are protected and that generally the balance of trade with them is adverse to the Dominion. They, of course, have every right to be self-protected; so have we. They have every right to push our products out of their market; but a necessary consequence is that we must regard the Motherland's market as a much safefinvestment, so far as we are concerned.