ITALY AND WOOL IMPORTS

Evening Post, Volume CXVII, Issue 106, 7 May 1934, Page 8

ITALY AND WOOL IMPORTS

Both Japan and Italy are using their imports'of wool as a weapon to enable them to demand a greater consumption of their export goods, by wool-producing countries. The question has been raised in Australia 'whether a wool-importing country, unable to produce wool in sufficient quantity, would be prepared to tax or exclude Australian wool, as a penalisation of Australia's tariff; and the answer is suggested that no importing country,1 if it aspires to export, dare risk its own woollen manufactures by a policy that would increase the cost of the raw material. A good deal turns oh the extent to which the wool-importing country desires to export its manufactures. If successful competition in the export i market is the goal .of its woollen manufacturers, they can hardly be indifferent to the-price at which they can import wool. .They cannot treat their foreign .customers as harshly as they sometimes treat their home consumers. An instance of the costs that may be piled up on the home consumer is the enormous price of butter in Berlin and Paris at a time when British Dominions know not where to send their surplus butter. Economic nationalism may heap costs oh its own subjects, but—not so easily on other nations' subjects. The opinion is therefore expressed in Australia that competition in the world's markets will not.permit any important manufacturing country to imperil its raw material supplies. High prices of dairy products in France and Germany may force up home production of butter. Expansion of, home production of wool is a different matter.; V ,