THREAT TO TRADE

Gisborne Herald, Volume LXVIII, Issue 20499, 8 March 1941, Page 5

THREAT TO TRADE

BRITISH AND AMERICAN GERMAN "NEW ORDER" ECONOMIC PENETRATION WEST EUROPEAN STATES (Elec. Tel. Copyright—United Press Assn.) (Reed. March 8, 10.30 a.m.) LONDON, March 7. The Times’ monthly trade review contains a warning against the general attitude of under-estimating the new order in Europe. Its aim is to increase the German war economic potential and the effect the lasting exclusion of British and American business from the Continent and intra-Continental transactions from Norway to Yugoslavia. This would be effected through Berlin, giving Germany a working knowledge of the entire structure ot European finance, business and foreign trade, thus establishing an all-European economic Gestapo. Whereas the close collaboration of the western iron industries is mainly intended to increase Herr Hitler’s war economic potential, the building ot enormous power stations in Scandinavia and the adaptation ot the western textile industry to German textile fibres is clearly aimed at the main groups of British exports to Europe, such as coal, textiles, and machinery. Most of the changes were in iron manufacture in which Belgian, German and Lorraine works were closely connected. The western European economy is unlikely for some time to resist this development. On the contrary, the ,evidence points to the increased probability that the policy of penetration will be extended systematically to Western Europe in an attempt to change the intrinsic structure ot coordination. Changed European economy with re-established world trade, and the division ot labour presents one of the crucial problems of postwar construction.