RUSSIA’S DUMPING TACTICS

Hokitika Guardian, 18 October 1930, Page 6

RUSSIA’S DUMPING TACTICS

RUSSIA’S DUMPING TACTIS. (Otago “Times.”) Several cablegrams have lately been published relating to the dumping ol Russian wheat on foreign markets, and the Morning Post’s statement that the campaign is continuing with increasing intensity, with a specially generous intent as regards the shipment of Russian grain to England, lias no doubt more than a foundation in 'ifact. Thks bold attempt to knock the bottom out of the wheat market has already had a disturbing effect upon wheat prices, and growers in Canada and the United States are apprehensive. in Australia tlie position of wheat producers is sufficiently precarious without this new threat of foreign competition on an unequal basis. Only a few weeks ago the Premier of South Australia received a deputation which stated that at ruling prices it would not be profitable to take off the wheat crop. In a recent address Professor Charteris, who occupies the Chair of International Law at Sydney University, explained that the reason why Russia was selling her wheat abroad when she could consume it at home was because o fthe “five year plan” in pursuance of which Stalin has proposed to reorganise his unhappy country. 1 Anything more grandiose than this plan, observed Professor. .Charteris, it would be hard to Conceive. “The idea was to convert Russia .from a primary producing country into an agricultural and industrial State, using only mass production methods in industry and agriculture, tlie plan to last for five years and to cost £800,000,000. It was calculated that the fruition of the plan would have trebled Russia’s output in every field of industry.” Stalin immediately encountered difficulties, however, one of these being a lack of machinery. To procure this machinery foreign credit was required, and Russia, having repudiated both her war debt and her pre-war commercial debts, is debarred from obtaining loans. Therefore dumping lias been resorted to in order to obtain credits abroad.

That the Soviet is prepared to lose heavily . on the transactions goes without saying. Professor Charteris remarks on this point:—“The consideration of what wool or wheat cost was neither here nor tnere; os there was only one buying and selling authoritv in Russia it could dr •

any country it liked with its commodities.” This fine conception of ■Stalin’s rests, however, upon the assumption that the Soviet can stand the losses, and can keep the peasant producers tractable, and it is here that the weakness lies. Hie tact is tbc + Russia is exporting at uneconomic prices, wheat that is urgently required to feed the Soviet millions. In spite of , the rigid censorship, and Stalin’s short way with the disgruntled, there have been indications that the peasants are as unhappy as they are unpros-

porous. The Daily Telegraph, on information received from its Berlin coirespondent, predicts a serious crisis in the economic life of Russia, and states that om'nous mutterings are to 'he heard among the obscure individuals upon whom the future df the country rests—“the miserable masses who are paying in flesh and blood for the blunders of the infatuated theorists who rule them witf! the bayone and he biilin.” The “live yea rplnn” has been stated to he a hopeless failure, and a foreign scientific expert’s testimony, after Lsome experience in Bolshevist service, is described as devastating-. The inefficiency and impracticable folly apparent on all sides were summed up by this commentator in the remark that “the whole economy of the country is like a delirium.”