UNECONOMIC EXPORTS

Evening Post, Volume CXVII, Issue 65, 17 March 1934, Page 8

UNECONOMIC EXPORTS

It would not be wise of the public to assume that schemes''I,of. rcliefto exporting industries,' though ;,they may have a temporary "complexion, will be temporary. Levies made on all the butler produced in a country, to provide a fund for assisting the portion of butter that is exported, are paid by the consumer within the country, and when once those levies become systematic, they are as hard to get rid of as is a protective tariff. Should abolition be urged, the exporter asks why the consumer should pay to protect the secondary industries of, the country, and not pay to protect export industries. Thus the consumer rests between two millstones, the old tariff and the new levy. Has the levy on Australian butter proved to be merely a temporary imposition, dropped after the dairy farmer "got on his feet"? It has not. Starting in prosperity as the Paterson Plan, it has now developed into a fully statutory system (supported by laws of both Commonwealth and State) whereby, as today's cablegram states, "there will be a levy, on total production, of 4d per cwt in the case of butter and 2d in the case of cheese." Equalisation funds will be created whereby export butter and internally-consumed butter will bring to the producer the same return. Under this system, as has been long recognised, the consumer oversea will pay less; the consumer in Australia will pay more. That is to say, the Australian consumer will pay .in order to feed the oversea consumer. The circle would be complete if British manufacturers using machine-tools were (through a levy) to pay more for these in England, in order that the- British makers of machine-tools might sell machinetools to Australian factories at a cut rate. Notwithstanding the economic daring of the Elliot milk scheme of 'planned production" and marketing, Britain has^ not yet reached the point o£ inventing a Paterson Plan for British manufactures. But who knows?. By subsidising exports at the public expense—that is, by making food dear in Australia in order that it may be cheaper for people, on the other side of the globe -—politicians (or the sectional interests that force their hands) are exposing their weak spots to the arrows of those who say "eat your own butter? and'"wear your .own. wool." The argument of "use your own," if pushed to its logical conclusion, not only affects exchanges of goods between countries, but exchanges of goods between districts and between localities therein;' The cure for "export'run mad" is not:self-contain-ment run mad. The cure is to let exported goods pay for their own production and transport, and to abandon the war of tariff and quota against export levy and depreciated currency. What will the supporters of the Australian equalisation plan say. if Britain were to finance her milk prices equalisation by a duty on dairy produce imports?,