QUOTAS AND MANUFACTURES.

Evening Star, Issue 21640, 8 February 1934, Page 8

QUOTAS AND MANUFACTURES.

The case against an export quota which was urged by Mr W. Goodfellow and Mr J. Hislop at a meeting of Dunedin business men yesterday has been made familiar now from one end of the dominion to the other for the best part of a year. Everyone must deplore the prospect of a quota being placed on the dairy exports of this country by Great Britain at the expiry of the Ottawa agreement in about eighteen months from now. The prosperity of New Zealand depends on what it receives for its exports, of which dairy products are among the most important, and a limitation of the quantity of these that can be received in their best market threatens a serious blow. If it can be avoided all New Zealanders will have reason to rejoice, but it is impossible that it should be avoided by the bargain which Mr Goodfellow and his follow advocates suggest. The quota has not been threatened, as their arguments would imply, on account of any resentment which might be felt in Britain at the duties that are placed hero on British manufactures. If those duties were all abolished to-morrow the reasons for the quota, from Great Britain’s standpoint, would be the same as they are to-day. Restriction has been judged necessary owing to the congestion of the British market and the desire of the British Government to help its own producers, who are not being helped too soon, and whose products have as much right to first consideration in their own country as those of New Zealand have here. There is some hope that, with a general quota for exports, the advantage that is offered by a reasonable instead of a congested market may cause such an improvement of prices as will atone for lesser volume, but the disadvantages, from this country’s viewpoint, are not to be burked. Nob the least of them is the discouragement that might be given to improvement of quality when all exports were regulated, instead of competing on tneir merits. „