EVILS OF SHIPPING SUBSIDIES

Hawke's Bay Tribune, Volume XXIII, Issue 82, 18 March 1933, Page 3

EVILS OF SHIPPING SUBSIDIES

PUBLIC IMAGINATION STIRRED. The strong comments made by Sir Harry Goschen at the meeting of the National Provincial Bank on the evils of shipping subsidies shows that notice is being taken in important quarters outside the industry itself of what is now happening in shipping. There is no doubt that, rightly, public imagination is being stirred by the effects of the heavily subsidised competition which British shipping has at present to meet. For many years the official policy of the British shipping industry lias been one of tolerance. It claimed equal opportunity for the ships of all nations in all ports of the world, and it was, of course, prepared that this policy should be maintained in British ports, but it was inclined to reason that whether or not a country subsidised its shipping industry was mainly a matter for itself. Yet time showed how this foreign subsidising hit British shipping badly and that a system of indirect attack was at least as formidable as a direct one. British liners have been, and are being, driven out of old-established routes because of very heavily assisted competition, and owners of British cargo vessels have found themselves losing trade to foreign owners who, because of their Government bounties, could accept lower rates of freight. The influence of extravagant subsidies on international commerce is bound to be thoroughly bad. Countries which were able to pay in part for purchases, pfi foreign goods by shipping services have been deprived of this means of settlement to the loss of the foreign-export-ers, who have also had! to contribute by taxation to the cost of the subsidies. As Sir Harry Goschen suggested, the British nation is far from being without adequate means of reply; he remarked that the British Government and the Governments of the Dominions were now in an exceptionally strong position to negotiate on the subject. Such a course may Lave to be adopted.