BRITISH BALANCE OF TRADE.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LII, Issue 16020, 11 September 1915, Page 6

BRITISH BALANCE OF TRADE.

Ik New Zealand the financial position is made satisfactory by the remarkable excess of exports over imports. In the United Kingdom the financial position is sound because! the accumulated wealth of the nation forms a vast reserve fund from which the deficit of exports as compared to imports can be filled. In the first six months of the war the British excess of imports over exports was approximately £200,000,000, and it is estimated Jhat for the current year this excess may amount to £400.000,000. As about £350,000,000 is received annually by the United Kingdom as interest on oversea investments and as earnings of merchant ships, there is I theoretically a national deficit of only j j £50,000,000. This enviable financial j I positionso strong that with economy there need be no such j deficit, for nearly £200,000,000 is j spent annually on liquor and tobacco, £70,000,000 on non-alcoholic drink, and £75,000,000 on pleasure motor- | carswould enable the United King- ! dom to carry on the war indefinitely were it not for the necessity of financing the import trade of countries whose industries have been gravely f dislocated by the war and; whose exports have therefore fallen to a minimum. The United Kingdom

as. a national., entity is, of course, something other than the. British Government which is its .political administration, but in the last resort the British Government, with the consent of the nation, has at its disposal the wealth and the strength of the entire population. By tax and by loan the Government - gathers the financial sinews of war from the national wealth and the balance of trade even in war time indicates the extent to which the nation can finance its government without drawing upon its accumulated capital invested abroad or giving mortgages upon its domestic possessions to foreign money-landers.