NEW ZEALAND AND THE F.B.I.

Otago Daily Times, Issue 23706, 13 January 1939, Page 9

NEW ZEALAND AND THE F. 8.1.

“LEICESTER IS APPREHENSIVE” DOMINION “ ENTITLED TO HER OWN LINE” (From Our Own Correspondent) (By Air Mail) LONDON, Dec. 21. Leicester is apprehensive concerning the step taken by the New Zealand Government to limit importations. Every industrial organisation in the city is following with keen interest the news and views on a question which may have a very big effect on Leicester’s • export trade, says the Leicester Evening Mail. Among these organisations is the Federation of British Industries, of which Mr Ernest T. Walker is the chairman of the Leicester branch. Mr Walker represented Leicester at the special meeting of the federation held in London, at which discrimination by New Zealand, it was maintained, would be a breach of the Ottawa agreement. Mr Walker warned members of the Leicester and County Chamber of Commerce that the New Zealand Government’s action will probably mean the restriction of Leicester hosiery imports by the Dominion. “ The National Federation of Hosiery Manufacturers’ Association, which has its headquarters in Leicester, is keenly alive to the position, too, and it may well be that this new problem will lead to dramatic steps being taken,” said the Leicester Evening Mail, The Financial Times, commenting on the attitude of the Federation of British Industries, says that Mr Moir Mackenzie, the Empire director. “is well aware that the astuteness of Mr Walter Nash, the Finance Minister, has kept New Zealand from specifically announcing its intention of discriminating against British goods. But he believes the aim is there.

"The dispute has arisen largely because Mr Nash wants to find employment in secondary industries for some 20,000 workless. How' seriously this would affect British exports to New Zealand was discussed when the Finance Minister was last in this country to negotiate—unsuccessfully—-a trade pact to replace Ottawa. “The F. 8.1.. which is talking purely business on this occasion, appears to be saying to New Zealand: ‘ If you discriminate against our goods we shall seek to bargain elsewhere the right of free entry for agricultural products into the United Kingdom,’ ” the Financial Times continues. "As 85 per cent of New Zealand’s exports are sent here, it is hoped that this will prove a convincing argument. “Yet when Mr Mackenzie, speaking for industry, says that, if his worst fears are realised, he will ‘go baldheaded for a denunciation of the Ottawa pact.’ he would not deny that, in influencing the Anal decision of Whitehall, political and strategic factors may outweigh purely business considerations."

TOO MUCH ASSUMED “We must all hope that the quarrel developing between the New Zealand Government and the Federation of British Industries is not to be pushed, on either side, a outrance,” is the comment of the Birmingham Post. It declares that Mr Savage’s policy, recently confirmed by the country, implies two things. “ One is a rather raw deal for British investors in New Zealand; _ the other certain restrictions on British trade with New Zealand which the Federation of British Industries not unreasonably views with apprehension, How far these developments in New Zealand are properly resented here is a matter of opinion. Speaking by and large, we should say that the British investor has much better reason to be apprehensive than the British industrialist—and that there is at least a reasonable case to be argued that New Zealand trade restrictions, which the industrialist here resents, are to be imposed in the interests of the British investor. However that may be. the F. 8.1. seems to over-state its case when it assumes—quite contrary to the pledges Mr Savage has given—that New Zealand policy to-day involves a breach of the Ottawa Agreement and justifies measures, on this side, to abrogate the Ottawa Agreement as it affects New Zealand. Mr Peter Bennett and Mr Moir Mackenzie will seem to most of us to assume too much, and to make too little allowance for New Zealand conditions, when they say that the Ottawa Agreement has been broken and broken in the interests of Socialism.

"After all, to the New Zealand exporter a good deal of Great Britain’s present agricultural policy looks suspiciously like economic nationalism— Ottawa or no Ottawa. And, to the New Zealand importer, some of the arguments of the F. 8.1. must look very like an effort to boost British exports regardless of New Zealand’s effortsto develop home industries. Meanwhile, whether New Zealand is right or wrong, practically or morally. New Zealand is entitled to take her own line." .