RECIPROCITY

Evening Post, Volume CXXVI, Issue 58, 6 September 1938, Page 9

RECIPROCITY

BRITAIN & DOMINION

PLEA FOR RECONSIDERATION

"During the last six months we have seen in many parts of England evidence of a "decided swing away from New Zealand produce," states the chairman of the Reciprocal Trade Federation of the United Kingdom, Mr. A. J. C. Walters, in a letter to a New Zealand business, organisation. The federation, Mr. Walters adds, has done its best to counteract'the swing, but increased tariffs, or the threat of them, and the establishment of local industries tend to stiffen the attitude of the British public in industrial areas against New Zealand goods. If New Zealand will not share her prosperity with Britain, he,says, it is certain that in the near future thousands of British work-people will revert to margarine and foreign meat, either by force of unemployment and the dole, or because of offence at New Zealand's trading policy. "The maintenance of the exchange surcharge at a high level, and the avowed policy of the creation and protection of further secondary industries, are accepted here as two of the outstanding symbols of the real attitude of mind of a section of the New Zealand Government," Mr. Walters says. "This has steadily given rise to a reversion of feeling towards the Dominion by British manufacturers, and in the steel industry in particular there is not at all the friendly feeling among executives or employees there used to be towards New Zealand primary produce. * "At one time this federation had no difficulty in getting erected reciprocal trade posters by the score in British steel and allied industrial concerns, exhorting workmen to buy New Zealand produce. It is not so easy today to get this co-operation." REACTION TO TARIFFS. "The time has now gone by when Great Britain can afford to adopt a too benevolent attitude towards any of the Dominions who, in claiming the right, as they are fully entitled to do, to determine their own destiny, cannot justly criticise any measures of a retaliatory nature which may be levelled against them. British export trade is fighting for its life and there are many who claim that in the battle for trade they are entitled to use such weapons as may be available. "Thus we see the immediate reaction of an increase in duties by New Zealand on footwear, small though the duties were, and the people in that Dominion would be unwise to disregard the warning which they have had; and at the same time they must bear in mind that this attitude is not confined to isolated sections of industry, but runs right through the industrial fabric of Great Britain. You will see it exemplified soon in the steel areas of Great Britain. . . . This federation is striving for the development of sane reciprocal trade in the Empire, but we get many rebuffs from Dominions who sudde.nly out of the blue produce trade restrictions which, offend British manufacturers and please only a small section of Dominion manufacturers.

"We would most strongly urge New Zealand to consider most carefully her future commercial policy, taking into account the fundamental basis of her prosperity, namely, the production and^ sale overseas of primary foodstuffs, and study from everyf aspect the possible serious repercussions of a day-to-day policy of self-determina-tion and economic independence. . .'.

Some leaders of New Zealand secondary' industries would be well advised to be a little more earnest in their utterances and a little less zealous in pushing politicians to legislate further against the well-being of the Old Country.

"Great Britain is tolerant, but there is a limit, and in a w.orld where trade is daily becoming more circumscribed and hourly more difficult, it behoves all sections in the Dominions to see to it that further restrictions against the freer entry of British manufactured goods are not encouraged—in fact, not tolerated."