U.S. TARIFF

Hokitika Guardian, 8 May 1929, Page 5

U.S. TARIFF

NEW INCREASES. United Press Association—By Electric '1 elegraph—Copy i ignt). (Received this day at 10 a.m.) WASHINGTON, May 7. The new Republican Tariff, introduced in the House to-day increases raw Wool clean content, three cents to thirty-four cents. The world rate for raw sugar is increased by three cents per pound. Refined jumped to three and a-lmlf cents. Fresh beef and veal from three to six; fresh lamb four to seven. The Rate Changes Bill must he referred hack to the House Ways and .deans Committee for formal approval. hut the Republican majority is relieved to be sufficient to carry it. Rates on woven wool fabrics weighing more than four ounces per square yard and valued at not more than sixty cents per pound, arc raised from ihirty-seven to forty cents per pound, and fifty per cent ad valorem rate between eighty cents and a dollar and a-haf per pound is raised from fortyfive to fifty cents with fifty per cent, .id valorem, and the rate between a dollar and a-lialf to two per pound is -nised to fifty cents per pound and ..rty-fivo per cent, ad valorem. Wheat remains at forty-two cents, which is the thirty cent rate of last Act, plus the increase made by the President' under the Flexible Tariff Act, but wheat .flour, semilina, crushed nr cracked wheat and similar wheat products would be increased from seventy-eight cents to a dollar four cents per bushel. Fresh chilled or frozen beef is increased six cents per pound, sheep, iambs and goat three dollars per head chilled, or frozen goat meat live cents per pound. Rates on butter, oleo. margarine, and other butter .substitutes is increased twelve cents per pound. The general rate of six cents per pound, but not less than twenty per cent, ad valorem. is placed on fresh chilled, frozen, prepared for preserved meats not especially provided for in the Bill. Cotton duties are also materially increased while the flexible tariff provision empowering the President to alter tank's up or down by fifty per cent, is left unchanged. The Bill, nevertheless, proposed a change of basis upon which such flexible changes are .computable. The present law provides that the President may alter rates to equalise 'lie cost of production at home and abroad, but due to the difficulties encountered in inscerlaiiiing foreign costs, the Bill would change the basis to “conditions of competition in principal market or markets of the United Stales between domestic articles and like or similar competitive imported' articles.” Mr Hawley, in a statement accompanying the Bill, defended the increases on the ground that Labour costs abroad wore forty per cent, under American wages. Under the Bill, hides and leather will be left on the free list.