A GRAVE DANGER

Waipa Post, Volume 48, Issue 3470, 24 May 1934, Page 3

A GRAVE DANGER

LOW-PRICED JAPANESE GOODS.

The United Kingdom Manufacturers and New Zealand Representatives' Association has brought to the notice of "The Dominion" an example which, it considers, forcibly illustrates the grave danger of importers of United Kingdom goods being forced out of business if immediate steps are not taken to bring the landed cost of Japanese goods into line with that of the United Kingdom article. Patterns submitted of a Japanese line of artificial silk showed a landed cost in New Zealand of approximately one-third of the landed cost of a line of English artificial silk to which they were exactly similar in pattern. They had, in fact, been copied from the English pattern, each one of which cost the English manufacturer about £ls to design. It should be noted that the Japanese landed cost is after paying 40 per cent, ad valorem duty. The United Kingdom Manufacturers and New Zealand Representatives' Association realises that ad valorem duties are useless in dealing with goods produced in Japan, as the current domestic value on which the duty is based is so low, and has requested the Customs Tariff Commission, whose report has been presented to the Government, to recommend that specific duties of so much per article or per yard, cU-., should be substituted, also that it be made compulsory for all goods to be branded with the country of origin, to ensure that the buying public will knowwhere their purchases are manufactured.