NEW ZEALAND TRADE

New Zealand Times, Volume XLVI, Issue 10634, 6 July 1920, Page 4

NEW ZEALAND TRADE

AMERICAN COMPETITION TRUST METHODS AND DOMINION INTERESTS. A special correspondent! of an Amerf* can publication, writing from Wellington recently, directs attention to an article which appeared in Now Zealand papers, and proceeds as follows: “Durmg a visit of nearly two months to Australia and Now Zealand I have been much annoyed and more surprised at numerous manifestations of unfriendliness to the United States,’’ said T. E. Burton, a former member ol the United States Senate, in the columns of a New Zealand newspaper. Tho visitor proceeded.to refer to “violent and usually ignorant attacks upon American commercial and political policies.” Mr Burton does not give chapter and verse for his complaint, but it is easy to guess’that the “unfriendliness” to which ho alludes is purely commercial in its origin. The people of New Zealand certainly cannot be charged in any general sense with being unfriendly in their attitude tp wards the United States. They do' not think of Americans as ’’aliens” at all,, and they find' m American sentiment and American policies much that they can_ understand and endorse. But “business is business” the world over, and New; Zealand merchants have been embarrassed lately by the adverse exchange rate and a Little alarmed by tho threat which they see in the Webb Act. EXCHANGE RATE IS SAFEGUARD

Commenting on this Act, one New Zealand authority remarks that the adverse exchange rate, by checking the purchases of British countries in the United States, has the effect of “establishing a certain safeguard against American trade penetration.” “It is as well, perhaps, that this is the case,” he adds, “for certain of the export trading plans of the United States are calculated in themselves to inflict serious and lasting damage on her rivals and competitors, and most of all on countries like New Zealand, which are intent on developing secondary industries \from comparatively small beginnings. . . . The Webb Act authorises export trading methods which can only be regarded as ruthlessly pillaging, but ela,boratel , safeguards are provided against the Application of such methods to trading operations within the territory of the United States.” The fact is that the “Webb Act to promote United States Export Trade by Combination” is being interpreted m this part of the world to mean that American manufacturers and exporters are being encouraged by their Government to capture foreign trade by trust methods.

COMMON PRICE FIXED. “The essential purpose of this Act,* New Zealand people are being told, “is to remove, as far as export trade is concerned, all the restraints that are imposed by anti-trust legislation cn trading operations within the United States. Under its provisions a majority of the manufacturers engaged in- a given branch of export trade, or as many of them as control ol per cent, of its. output, are .empowered to combine with a view to capturing foreign markets. Tiiey are empowered to fix a common price for the goods in which they deal, to undersell competitors for the purpose of gaining a footing and destroying competition, and, in fact, to use freely every weapon and device of monopolistic trading.” New Zealand traders (the writer says in conclusion) are naturally watching the operation of this American legislation with much interest. If they find that their interests are being threatened by the' extension of trust methods in. the American export) trade, they will seek legislative jirotection. The Dominion has been buying American goods to the value of roughly £4,000,000 a year lately, this sum representing nearly 20 per cent, of the total imports. The proportion will be much reduced in the 1920 statistics owing to the adverse rate of exchange, which is having the effect of a heavy additional tariff against Ameri can goods.