Wairarapa Daily Times (Established Over 60 Years.) MONDAY, 14th SEPTEMBER, 1936. A TRADE WAR.

Wairarapa Daily Times, 14 September 1936, Page 4

Wairarapa Daily Times (Established Over 60 Years.) MONDAY, 14th SEPTEMBER, 1936. A TRADE WAR.

Neither party to the AustralianJapanese trade dispute desires its continuance. But Japan sought to hold a superior bargaining position by erecting restrictions against Australian goods, which they then offered to abandon only if Australia would surrender its stand upon the right to control trade with Britain. The Commonwealth Government has refused that position, and has issued its new licensing regulations solely as an answer to those of Japan, and for the purpose of bargaining. Till that was done it had nothing

to give away in further conference. That Australian woolgrowers should be disturbed and anxious is entirely natural. The Japanese, of coui'se, calculated upon just that effect; they hold that their own national spirit is superior to other peoples’, in that the Japanese will accept individual sacrifice in the country’s cause. Aside from such imputations upon the inability of Australians to consider any but a selfish interest —a belief easily exaggerated abroad —the criticisms so far uttered against the Commonwealth Government exhibit much too short-sighted a view. They overlook the Government ’s attempt at a compromise agreement, its obligation to protect not merely one but all trading interests of the country, and the nature of the threats which it had to meet as expressed in the published import statistics. But they overlook also the fact that, before this dispute came to a head, Japan had longbeen threatening the Australian wool industry with the development of the artificial substitute. Rayon and artificial avool are produced from the same basic vegetable fibre. Behind the Japanese drive to conquer the world’s rayon and cotton markets is growing a Japanese woollen textile export trade.