EMPIRE TRADE

Otago Witness, Issue 3594, 30 January 1923, Page 42

EMPIRE TRADE

PROPOSED ECONOMIC CONFERENCE. PRIME MINISTER’S ANNOUNCEMENT. (From Our Own Correspondent.) LONDON, December 7. Communications have been sent this week to various dominions and colonies acquainting them of the British Cabinet’s decision to hold an Imperial Economic Conference early next year. Although some replies have been received from overseas the Colonial Office have to-day informed me that the New Zealand Government have not yet cabled their views. Doubtless the General Election is overshadowing all else. The definite announcement of this conference was made by Mr Bonar Law when speaking on an amendment to the Address-in-Reply to the Speech from the Throne. The subject under discussion was unemployment. jlfter dealing with immediate methods of aaneliorating the position, the Prime Minister continued: “I must say a few words about the possibility of more work within the Empire. That is not a question of fiscal heresy. Take myself. I pledge myself not in this Parliament to alter our fiscal principle. Neither is it a question of figures. It is not a question of the number of people who might possibly be customers, but it is a question of the number of people who are customers. I believe in the necessity of getting peace in Europe. When I tell the House that before the war the value of our trade with the dominions, with a white population of 17,000,000, was over one-third of our trade with Europe, with a population of 436,000,000, you will understand what it means. In 1913 exports with the Empire were two and a-half times the size of our exports with all the disorganised countries of Central Europe. In 1921 they were four and a-half times as large. In 1913 our import trade with the Empire was one and two-fifths of our import trade with the disorganised countries of Central Europe and the Near East. In 1921 it was nearly five times as great. What is the explanation of that? There is no mystery. Trade, however bad the conditions, if it is left to its own devices, with the wicked system of private enterprise, will find some means of making the best of these bad conditions. We used to buy immense quantities of food and raw material from Russia. Now we get them largely from other countries:’ The buying power has been transferred from Central Europe to other countries, and it is there we must look for an improvement in trade in the near future.—(Hear,. hear.) It is not really a question of putting Empire first or of putting other countries first. “I say nothing about the need of getting Europe put on her feet. We all desire that. But surely nothing could be worse for trade than to give the impression that there can be no improvement until Central Europe is put right. That is the possibility of an immense improvement. It was not electioneering merely to say I was going to call an economic conference. Not at all. I am not afraid of a little inflsit’o-' you are going to call it that—which would bo caused by advancing purchases in this country for work, the payment for which will be extended over a long time. I can assure the House it is by that kind of method that the only real hope of our getting out of this terrible position of unemployment lies.” The Cabinet feel that, having regard to the urgency of the position, no time should be lost in preparing proposals for the development of Imperial resources. AN ATMOSPHERE OF REALITY. A series of special articles is now appearing in the columns of the Morning Post regarding' the proposed conference. “Though this session of Parliament will be devoted exclusively to the Irish Treaty,” says the writer, “the preparation for an Imperial Trade Conference is a matter for Cabinet and not Parliamentary action. Mr • Bonar Law can set the machinery in motion now for the collection of data; can then come to a decision as to the general lines of the programme which the British Government will propose; and can submit this—confidentially for preference—to the Governments of the Overseas Dominions, so that the conference may. meet at an early date with some of the work of preliminary . discussion already done. “To begin discussions on the basis that a serious position faces us and that the Empire should! act together is the first essential. Mr Bonar Law, who is not given to a facile optimism and who ,has first-hand knowledge of trade and industry, will be probably not averse to this, and it is his good fortune to have in, his Cabinet more than one colleague who can assure him that dominion sentiment will respond best to a frank appeal. Presuming that the conference is to be summoned in a spirit of candlour and to meet in an atmosphere of reality, the British Government might at once set its servants to work to collect data under the three following heads: 1. The trade relations existing before the war between foreign countries, such as France, the United States, Germany, Holland, etc., and their overseas dominions. 2. The general course of trade between the United Kingdom and the British overseas dominions, year by year, since 1920. 3. The course of trade as regards particular commodities in which a British Empire product has been in part or in whole supplanted by a foreign product in any part of the British dominions since 1920.” DOWNWARD TENDENCY SINCE 1900. In the second article on the subject the writer quotes some interesting figures. Since the beginning of this century down to 192021 the proportion of British imports to total imports has fallen by 50 per cent, in Canada, by nearly 30 per cent, in India, by 35 per cent, in Australia, by 20 per cent, in New Zealand, by nearly 20 per cent, in South Africa. If we could restore our exports to the dominions to the 1900 proportion the value of British exports to Australia, in round figures, would have been £61,000,000, instead of as it was—£43,ooo,ooo in 1919-20; and to Canada would have been £50,000,000 instead of £25,000,000; and so on throughout the dominions. The total value of increased British exports to the dominions, if the 1900 rate had been maintained, would have approached £100,000,000. It is not generally recognised how very greatly British goods have been supplanted by foreign goods in our dominion market. A table given by Sir P. Lloyd-Graeme to the Royal Colonial Institute recently showed these figures of the propor-

tion of imports from th«* United Kingdom to the total imports of the dominions:

hack to the 1875 proportion (when Umpire trade was saving the British manufacturer from ruin at a critical time) may seem a 100 optimistic aim. But the 1900 proportion is a possible immediate aim, and to attain it would mean an enormous improvement in British industry. As it is, after the interruption of the war we have not got back to the 1913 proportion, though the aggregate figures for 1921 show an increase in nominal value ovfcr 1913. The actual value (on a 1913 prices basis) is less; and the proportion of British imports, compared with total imports in our dominions, shows a decline from about 50 per cent, in 1913 to about 38 per cent, in 1919-20.

India 1&75 1,900. 1913. 1919-20. p.c. p.c. p.c. p.c. .77 65 . 65 47 Canada . 4!) 24 20 12 Australia . 73 61 52 39 Now Zealand . 64 61 60 48 . South Africa (Cape Colony and Natal) . 83 65 56 56