WHAT IS "REASONABLE"?

Evening Post, Volume CXV, Issue 74, 29 March 1933, Page 6

WHAT IS "REASONABLE"?

.Any suggestion that New Zealand have been directly or indirectly to^lame.for delay in making further tariff in line with the Ottawa Agreement is negatived by Ministerial statements, including what the Prime' Minister said to the Auckland Manufacturers' Association. Mr. Forbes also reaffirmed the principle of reasonable protection for secondary industries. What is "reasonable protection"? Is "reasonable protection" of secondary industries consistent with the suggestion that the toll imposed on imports, by the farmers' 15. per cent, exchange increase, should be counterbalanced by tariff decreases on manufactured goods? Before the exchange was raised there was a fairly clear idea of what British manufacturers were suffering under tariff arrangements, and what. concessions New Zealand might be able to make"in tariff.. (The problem was at least outlined iir principle; but the effect of the new 15 per cent, on the cost of imports, and on the New Zealand public's purchasing power, has upset the balance that existed when the Ottawa Agreement was signed. Does "reasonable protection" mean that the tariff first repays to imports the additional 15 per cent disability, and then proceeds to make such other concessions as the Ottawa Agreement may be deemed to demand?

From the importers—not in this instance from the manufacturers— comes a clear note of dissent from the; idea of "the farmers' leaders" that "our tariff should be drastically reduced in order that the Ottawa Agreement be kept." As a third party to the farmer-manufacturer dispute, the New Zealand Importers' Federation describes the position as "almost comical." Whether the tariff fence is to receive t-^o strokes of the axe—one for exchange and one for Ottawa—or whether it is to receive one comprehensive stroke, does not matter in the case of those manufactures which New Zealand, in the farmers' interests, already admits free. As the Federation sees it—\

It is impossible to right the wrong which was inflicted on the English manufacturers of such goods through exchange inflation by reducing duties which do not exist. \ *

•And where a tariff fence does exist, the height of that fence is as much a factor as is the height of the farmers' exchange folly. There is not unlimited fence ready to be ciit down to compensate for unlimited folly; in fact, \as the Prime Minister in Auckland said: . '>"

The New Zealand tariff was very low in comparison with that of Australia, and the British manufacturer was given greater opportunities to do business. New Zealand, in fact, had gone to considerable lengths to keep her tariff at a reasonable level. /

Can concessions that are due from a "reasonable" tariff; in accord with the Ottawa Agreement, be rightlystretched to pay for a post-Ottawai (and anti-Ottawa) development in the exchange field. The remedy of the Importers' federation is not to strike two blows at the tariff fence. The Federation says:* "Let the exchange rate reach its normal level, and then let our tariff be reviewed in order to bring it into line with Ottawa." It is quite clear that extreme farmer sentiment is rapidly isolating itself. -