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The New Zealand Railways Magazine, Volume 2, Issue 9 (January 1, 1928)

Great Britain's Trade Position

page 14

Great Britain's Trade Position.

The reports which at the time of writing have just appeared in the English papers with regard to the changes in the New Zealand Tariff and the extension, as a result of Preference in respect of certain classes of British goods, have occasioned profound satisfaction in Great Britain.

New Zealand buys to-day far more British goods per head of its population than any other country in the world. Australia is in fact its only near competitor in this respect, and the average New Zealander, by the way in which he spends his money, provides at least half as much additional employment in Great Britain as the Australian, and forty times as much as the average American.

Picton (Marlborough's Port).

Picton (Marlborough's Port).

Though New Zealand is the most distant market and has the smallest population of any important market, it beats all but nine of the countries of the world in its aggregate purchases of goods from Great Britain.

I emphasize the importance of the New Zealand market so that New Zealand may realise that we here appreciate to the full what New Zealanders have done to help our trade by their system of Tariff Preferences and also by the Preference which they so frequently accord to British goods by their free choice when buying. We in turn reciprocate and take enormous quantities of products from New Zealand, far more in fact than we sell to the Dominion. New Zealand sells to Britain more than any single European country except France, and outside of Europe is beaten only by the United States, the Argentine Republic, and Australia. In fact it is startling to realise that New Zealand sells to us more than the whole of the great Indian Empire. All my figures above are based on the returns of the first six months of 1927.

Great Britain has passed through a period of extreme economic difficulty, intensified in no small measure by the courageous way in which it shouldered all the debt burdens arising out of the War, while refraining for a long time from asking for any repayment from those of its Allies whose territories had been over-run. This burden, superimposed upon the collapse of world trade, and increased by the false idea that a prosperous life could be obtained without undue effort—which spread so freely through all classes of the community after the War—has made her period of adversity a long one.

From what we are told by the people who have been travelling abroad, there are people who are foolish enough to think that because of her difficulties Britain's trading days are numbered as a great manufacturing and trading nation. I, for one, am certain that this is by no means the case. We continue to maintain, in part, a worn-out fiscal system, which prevents our retaining for ourselves the full benefit of our Home market, and at the same time prevents our according to the products of other parts of the Empire that full measure of Tariff Preference which would be so beneficial all round.

Under the safeguarding system import duties have been imposed on a variety of imported manufactured products, and the results have been extremely good. Production and employment in the affected industries has increased; the costs of production have been reduced in many cases, and, as a whole, the consumer is no worse off (possibly a little better off), for while there have been increases in prices in some goods, there have been material decreases in others. All these safeguarding duties are preferential in respect of Empire products.

In addition, under our old Revenue Tariff, which affects imported products such as tea, coffee, cocoa, sugar, tobacco, dried fruits and wines, it has been possible to accord preference of very great value to other parts of the Empire, and to many of us it is a matter of profound regret that New Zealand does not, broadly speaking, happen to be a producer to any large extent of any of the commodities to which so far it has been possible for us to extend the principle of Preference. However, the page 15 principle is established, and I am hopeful that public opinion in Great Britain will, before many years have passed, permit it to be extended far more widely than is the case at present.

Of course, all our difficulties are not due to the competition of imported foreign products. There have been many other causes, including a great deal of industrial unrest. Many of these other causes have passed, and are passing away. The efficiency of British labour is to-day much higher than it has been for many years past, and, as a result, there has been a substantial recovery in many industries; though, on the other hand, many of the big industries, such as coal, iron, steel, cotton and woollen textiles, are still suffering severely.

As I happen to sit in Parliament as a supporter of the present Government, I am naturally inclined to take for that Government some of the credit for the improvement.

While: we still have on our unemployment register over 1,000,000 persons, this does not mean, of course, that this represents a great mass of people continuously unemployed, for it consists, in the main, of people suffering periods of temporary unemployment. The figure, though large, is substantially below the level of unemployment which was reached during recent years.

It is important to realise that in addition to the reduction in the number of unemployed, there has been a rapid and satisfactory absorption of the rising generation, and it is estimated, on good authority, that there are 900,000 more people at work in Great Britain to-day than there were when the present Government took office nearly three years ago. It may impress upon my readers the magnitude of the improvement when I tell them that in three years the addition to the number of people actually in work in Great Britain is considerably in excess of the total number of people at work in the whole of New Zealand.

The present spirit in industry is far more peaceful than it has been for 20 years past. This is a feature which is giving rise to considerable optimism.

If the present spirit of the nation continues, and if we can take appropriate steps to safeguard our industries against unfair foreign, competition, and promote our Imperial trade by a wise extension of Imperial Preference, I, for one, am satisfied that there lies ahead of the people of Great Britain a period of prosperity far in excess of anything that may have been known in the past. This will not come at once, it will take time, but with reasonable luck it will be obtained.

Tablet Room at Thornbury in Southland, 1925.

Tablet Room at Thornbury in Southland, 1925.