EMPIRE TRADE

Timaru Herald, Volume CLVIII, Issue 23287, 24 August 1945, Page 2

EMPIRE TRADE

Britain’s Great Need I Conference Suggested Integration Of Policies An Empire trade-planning eonfer- ( ence to seek ways of harmonising the : Dominions' manufacturing and intI port policies with Britain’s urgent need for export markets is suggested i in the following article by a London I staff correspondent of the “Sydney Morning Herald." I An attempt to track down Britain’s : plans for resuming her export trade : with Australia leads the inquirer into | a disheartening cul-de-sac. No one in Britain seems to know what Australia j wants from Britain, or what her future I trade policy is to be. ; Recent “trade bargaining' visits to I England by individual State Premiers are- widely condemned, and a demand is growing for a new Empire Conference on the Ottawa model capable of mapping out a mutually acceptable long-range trade policy. Urgency of Exports Unquestionably British manufacturers are desperately eager to start production again for export, but all. with the exception of the textile and automobile industries, which are receiving limited Government encouragement, are uncertain how to go about it. They say they want to export such typically British export lines as apparel, textiles, machinery, tools, crockery, glassware, cutlery, silverware, plasticware, optical and surgical appliances, cameras, film, jewellery, fancy goods, toys, books and spirituous liquors, but they fear American competition in these goods, and they have no idea of the size or receptivity j of the Australian market. Before the war Britain exported £46,000,000 worth of manufactured | goods every year to Australia. They helped to pay for the food and raw | materials she Imported from the | Commonwealth. To-day her exports I are probably down to a third of their I pre-war level. i If on present price levels Britain is ■ to pay for a volume of imports comI parable with that of 1938, she wil.l I have to increase her experts to Ausi tralia by 50 per cent, in volume. ' British manufacturers say frankly i that they have no confidence that i that can be done. I What are Dominion Policies? Britain, they point out, cannot revive her manufacturing industries without importing a steady flow of foodstuffs and raw materials from Empire countries, including Australia. And she cannot buy these things unless she can pay for them with her exports. What exports, they ask, is Australia prepared to take, and in what quantity, and when? If she wants Britain to take her own exportable surplus, what British manufactured goods does she want to be paid in? There is a widespread feeling among British manufacturers that they will no longer enjoy in Australia the same export opportunities they had before the war. They want to know to what extent war-time stimulation of Australian manufacturing has cut the ground from under their feet, and in what new directions Australian Governments are encouraging further manufacturing inroads into their former Australian markets. An air of frustration pervades the vast field of British industry as it surveys the looming post-war world. It sees the shelves of mankind empty and people crying out for goods they

cannot get—goods which Britain cannot make until the war against Japan is finished. Internal Problems These manufacturers are acutely conscious of the fact revealed last month by the President of the Board of Trade, Mr Lyttelton, that, whereas British exports declined during the war from £532.000.000 to £330.000.000. those of the United States including lend-iease. had a fourfold increase, rising from £717.000,000 in 1939 to £3.250.000.000 in 1944. It is a depressing picture. They see no attempt to lift British purchase tax. which makes the price of British manufactured goods virtually prohibitive on the heme market. Before the year is out they know that 750,000 men and women will be returning from the fighting services to mills, mines and factories, but they also know that this initial measure of relief will be offset by the departure from industry of a quarter of a million young men in the new call-up and a million old men and wives of former servicemen now straining for their return to the freedom of home life. They know that British labour Is tiled after five and a half years of unprecedented effort, that it is poorly fed. badly clothed and apathetic, that it needs a complete change of diet, new clothes, new houses and a large assortment of moderately priced luxury goods to revive its flagging spirit and buck it up. Less Hidebound Criticism They know' that the coming winter will be the leanest on record, testing to the limit the physical resistance of a people already stripped to the bone of essentials. And they know that this situation will persist until the flow of raw materials from abroad is resumed, until more labour tools are supplied, and programmes, and schedules drawn up. Little wonder that the outlook for exports is discouraging. Most British industrialists accept philosophically the increasing industrialisation of Australia, though it automatically reduces their export markets within the Empire. There is less hidebound criticism of Australian industrial trends than there has ever been. Indeed, scores of Britain's most influential manufacturers are falling in with those trends by setting up branch factories in Australia on the principle that if the Empire is going to spread they want to spread But they are curious about some aspects of it. Twice nov. I have heard people ask what Australia intends to do with all the war-time plants set up during the war and soon to become redundant. Will she continue to build ships and aircraft as a national policy, or './ill she simply maintain her aircraft factories and shipyards as strategic standby plants? In other words can British aircraft manufacturers and shipbuiid-rs expect orders from within the Empire, or are they to be forced to build solely for .he European and South American I markets? Empire Reciprocity Wanted Will the orders conic in regularly and permanently, or will they be parcelled out piecemeal, an order here. I an order there? If the latter is the prospect, many manufacturers say bluntly that they will not be interest-1 cd. They shun the prospect of a return to the pre-war condition of chaotic trade and steadily contracting home industries. If th? order be for clocks, carpets or crockery, they want to know first how long the market, will last. Everywhere you go you find increasing support for the notion of Empire reciprocity, a demand for an Empire inventory of needs and supplies, an improved Empire trade intelligence, and a mutual agreement upon longterm as opposed to short-term trade policy. As one man put it: "What is the use of our setting out to fill Australia's empty shelves, only to discover in the end that we are filling the wrong shelves?" The great need, they conclude, is tor an early Empire Conference to determine how Dominion manufacturing and import policy can be made to fit ) in with the clamant requirements of British export industries. But to ensure a smooth transfer from war tc peace it must, they insist, be held soon, and not after the last enemy is beat, n.