Poverty Bay Herald. PUBLISHED EVERY EVENING. GISBORNE, WED., FEBRUARY 22, 1928. INTER-IMPERIAL TRADE

Poverty Bay Herald, Volume LIV, Issue 16580, 22 February 1928, Page 6

Poverty Bay Herald. PUBLISHED EVERY EVENING. GISBORNE, WED., FEBRUARY 22, 1928. INTER-IMPERIAL TRADE

Whilst inter-imperial trade is most desirable in principle and should in every way be encouraged, it is found by experience that there are a good many difficulties' in carrying it into effect. Though the Dominions give liberal preference to the manufactures of the Homeland, they find that, the freetrade fetish in England, combined with the business interests that are interested in foreign trade, ns well as the interests of the Home producer, form an almost insuperable barrier to the expansion of trade. A large sec? lion of the people at Home view with some scepticism the Australian and other Dominion tariffs, which whilst they give undoubted preference against the foreigner are still sufficiently high when applied to British goods to encourage purchase of colonial-made articles. The manufacturer and merchant of the Midlands object to those tariffs and consider that no help should be given by the Empire Marketing Board to the building up of industries in the Dominions which must ultimately bo competitive with British industries. All that the Old Country should do, they consider, is to send abroad its surplus population to take up land in the overseas States of the Empire. No encouragement should be given to the establishment of industries overseas. That, it may be said, is a cardinal plank of Liberal policy at Home. If does not lit in with the policy of the Dominions, which is to become in every way self-supporting. Then as between Dominion and Dominion difficulties arise which it is very difficult to overcome. Mr. Pratten' the Federal Trade Minister, is to visit New Zealand in a few days to talk over issues which have arisen in the interpretation of the AustralianNew Zealand trade treaty. Where two countries produce, in the main, goods of a similar nature it is not easy to find favorable opportunities for trade. Australian markets are subject to seasonal fluctuation and are occasionally very tickle, as New Zealand exporters have often found to their cost. Moreover, the Australian agriculturalist or pastoralist is jealous of overseas shipments from New Zealand which depress his market. New Zealand, at the same time, sets bounds to tho importations of grain and other foodstuffs from Australia which may overstock the local markets and cause poor returns to the New Zealand grower. The dairymen of Victoria and New South Wales have been protesting loudly against recent shipments of New Zealand butter to their Slates to meet an actufil or anticipated shortage, and there is a plea that the fid per lb duty which New Zealand butter has to bear is not sufficiently deterrent, which says something for the appreciation by the Australian public of New Zealand butter. In Canada also butter has become a troublesome topic. The Dairy Council of Canada has declared war on the Australian and New Zealand trading treaties and recently sent a delegation to Ottawa to demand three things: to apply the dumping clause to all butter sent' rrom Australia to Canada; to rescind the special privileges granted to New Zealand; and to terminate the trade agreement on six months’ notice. The Dairy Council said the treaty, which reduces tho duty on Australian and New Zealand butter from 2d per lb. to Jd is ruining the dairying industry pf. Canada, jmr-

ticularly of Western Canada' and it’ points to tho fact that whereas Canada used to export 24,000,Q001bs of butter a year it now imports 19,000,0001b5. 'fhe Council insists that through the treaties something was taken away from tho Canadian farmer, and asks that it be restored to him. Fortunately, however, Canada has as its Dairy Commissioner a gentleman who knows something about the business and through his previous connection with this Dominion is not unsympathetic towards Now Zealand. Dr. Ituddick has made it clear .that dairying in Canada is not going to the dogs. There are 00,00 more milk cows in that Dominion this year than last, and whatever relative decline in production there has been lias been due to an exceptionally hard winter. Besides all this, the home consuption of butter has grown and the export of cream and cheese to the United States has increased. There has been a shifting of business, Dr. Ruddick intimates, but the industry, as a whole, has not suffered. The Toronto Globe has been looking into the figures and finds that the creamery output was m excess of the previous year, whilst the sale of milk was greatly in excess. “Butter prices in Canada,” it says, “might have gone to higher levels but for the Australian trade agreement and the consequent importations from the Antipodes. There is no evidence in official statistics, however, to show that Canadian prices liavo been depressed as a result of the treaty. On the contrary, the average prevailing prices charged by grocers in sixty-nine Chios and towns since the agreement went into effect, have been four cents per pound higher than before. Moreover, in sixty out. of the, last hundred weeks Montreal prices have been higher than those of london.’ ’ If prices for butter are higher in Canada to-day than they .were before the Australian and New Zealand treaties went into effect, and if the industry is expanding as Dr. - Ruddick says it "is, there does not appear to be any reason, so far at least, as butter is concerned, for the abrogation of the treaty. The dairying industry, apparently,' has been passing through a period "of readjustment, and, at the same time, has been suffering somewhat from the action of natural causes. It is perhaps natural enough for it to look to Australia and New Zealand as the causes of its troubles, instead of to events at home. It may be natural enough to do this, but, it is scarcely logical.