CORRESPONDENCE

Evening Post, Volume CXII, Issue 58, 6 September 1926, Page 11

CORRESPONDENCE

THE MOTOR INDUSTRY

(To the Editor.)

Sir,—ls it not a fact that the real effect o£ the new motor-car duties, plausiblydisguised though they be, will be to entrench the large American manufacturers in an invulnerable position in this supposedly British country? The method in which the duties have been brought forward is not such as to inspire confidence in the Government. Tariff reform is proposed next year, and a Parliamentary Committee has had proposed amendments under consideration. This Committee is ignored, and in the last days o£ the session the new duties are suddenly sprung upon the country, and the overwhelming Government majority in Parliament is used to push them through. This may be considered excellent tactics by a Government desirous of doing something which the country on closer examination would be unlikely to approve. That, I believe, is the situation with regard to the motor duties. In the United States a regular branch of business with great corporations is Congressional lobbying and working up political support for prohibitive import duties on the articles manufactured or proposed to be manufactured by them. New Zealand's Parliament appears to be rushing helter-skelter to aid foreign corporations unasked. Or is this a mistaken supposition. The true effect of the proposal is sufficiently disguised for many people to believe that the duties represent an encouragement to British motor manufacturers. The general tariff on foreign cars is increased, the British general tariff on British cars is not,increased. This looks like aid to Britain. But when the newbody duty is considered, any such idea is seen to be wholly illusory. The new body duties on the less expensive British cars are just about as heavy as the duty assessed over the whole car, and to which duty the body duty is added. It might be argued that the American vehicle stands in the same position, except that bbth general and body duty are higher. That is true of the American vehicle without a Canadian plant to enable it To get the lower rate of preferential duty. The effect of the body duty will be that those motor companies whose operations in New Zealand are on a sufficient scale will be encouraged to do their body building in their own plants here. For the British manufacturer whose vehicles at present sell only in small numbers, to erect a body-building plant in this country would be a wholly uneconomic and impossible proposition. The large American manufacturers who established their control of the New Zealand market during the years when British motor plants were given over to war work, are now doing business on a sufficient scale to make local manufacture (or partial manufacture) of bodies an economic proposition. By building their bodies in their plants here they will be on velvet under the new tariff, and in competition against them the British manufacturer will have no chance at all that I can see of gradually picking up his leeway. I have no interest whatever in the sale in New Zealand of motor-cars. I am merely a New Zealander who has driven British-made motor vehicles for fourteen years, and who fails entirely to see why the Parliament of this country should be rushing to serve the interests of the United States. Let us remember that Britain i» not only paying off her war debt to the United States, but she is paying in gold for what we bought at inflated paper money values.—l am, etc., STICK TOGETHER.