JAPANESE COMPETITION

Otago Daily Times, Issue 22100, 2 November 1933, Page 8

JAPANESE COMPETITION

Publicists are apparently finding it easier to draw attention to the menace which Japanese industrial activity is presenting to British manufacturers than to suggest remedies that would be of practical benefit. Our cable messages this morning include an argument by an English Member of Parliament that British markets in the colonies and protectorates should be protected from Japanese invasion by a ■ preferential tariff, and a suggestion by a London evening paper that the competition is so one-sided that ordinary tariffs are ineffectual in dealing with it. This latter is the view which manufacturers in New Zealand have placed before the Tariff Commission, and it has received a great deal of acceptance. It is sufficiently obvious, however, that a unified closure of markets for Japanese goods by even prohibitive tariffs would bring no permanent solution of the problem. While Japan is a powerful trade rival of countries within the Empire, she is also a valued customei’, and it must be remembered, also, that she was a valued Ally during the Great War. Trade betweeii. New Zealand and Japan is far from being enormous, but it is sufficiently considerable to make it desirable to retain a Japanese market for certain of our exports, particularly wool, and the actual trade balance does not greatly favour Japan. Apai*t from immediate considerations of trading reciprocity, there is a broader international significance of the problem. To exclude Japan from a reasonable share of overseas trade would intensify the antagonism of Japan towards the countries that adopted any policy of a prohibitive nature and, by intensifying the domestic problems of that nation, might provoke disastrous international consequences. Mr Walter Nash, member for Hutt, who has returned this, week from a conference in Canada at which the trading relations between Japan and the British countries in the Southern Seas were discussed, has stated the position with some clarity, and has persuasively put forward a suggestion that trading by commodity exchange presents a solution of the problem. The difficulties of giving practical effect to this system of trade are so well-recognised that the suggestion will be regarded with some misgiving. Commodity agreements have, in fact, been tried on a small scale‘during the course of the present economic depression, but there has been no indication by the Governments concerned of a desire to extend them or to incorporate them in a permanent programme of commercial practice. An initial difficulty in the writing of such an agreement, say, between New Zealand and Japan, is that the disparity between the costs of production in the two countries is so great that it would tax the ingenuity of the Governments of the countries to establish a basis upon which they could satisfactorily negotiate. Another Labour Member of Parliament, Mr Barnard, devoted a large part of his speech during the Address-in-Reply to a discussion of Japanese competition in the New Zealand market. He was disposed to make rather light of the matter, and his suggestion of a “friendly agreement with Japan” is so vague as to be scarcely- helpful. The competition is, however, so serious that it may be presumed to have excited the concern qf most of the Governments in the Empire, and it is certainly desirable that the Administration in New Zealand should keep closely in touch with developments. Whether a proposal, which has received some consideration in the United Kingdom, that commercial zones should be agreed upon, with a view to confining Japanese trade within channels that would preserve Empire manufacturers from an embarrassing competition, would be practicable seems to be open to doubt.