TRADE WITH THE EAST.

Hauraki Plains Gazette, Volume XXXV, Issue 4700, 19 May 1924, Page 3

TRADE WITH THE EAST.

COMPETITIVE EXPORT DANGER. That there is a great ffulure before Ne.w Zealand in the supply of her products to the Far East is the opinion of Mr W. H. M. Cameron, who has arrived in the- Dominion-, after some time spent in the Argentine and Brazil, in the interests of a large publishing house of the Old Country. At the meeting of the Wellington Chamber of Commerce last week Mr Cameron drew attention to the large markets awaiting New Zealand in the Far East. He said that the question of Imperial trade, was inseparable from the interests of the large number of business houses that were quite outside the boundaries of the Empire. It must be remembered that foreign trade meant the. interchange of products. We must buy coffee from Brazil if we wished to export machinery to that country, and the thousands of opportunities for trade with the Argentine depended on their having obtained the necessary credits through our purchase of their meat and meat products. It was most important that merchants in .such countries as 'China, Japan, and Java be given every encouragement to share ;n ’British goods, for we must look to the development of future, markets. It had been suggested to him that Igew Zeawas isolated. To that he did npt subscribe. as it had a‘geographical advantage in nearness to the greatest of all future markets in the Far East. There was even to-day, sufficient business awaiting New Zealand there, and the additional markets thiti were due to come with the education of the Eastern peoples in the ude of Western foc-ds and methods would materially increase those possibilities. Now was the time to exploit thoee markets, ami to introduce the New Zealand shop and trade marks. It appeared to him as a recent visitor thtrt New Zealand enjoyed a great many advatages. It had been one of the tii>t to recover frein one of the greatest, catastrophic of history, and its products enjoyed splendid reputation wherever they had been marketed. When} these things were considered the mecessity for a tariff in Imperial trade 1 did not loom so large, especially a,s New Zealand had a market for all its ripducts in the Far East. Mr Qameron hinted at a great danger in arousing among the millions of people in the East a deskre for all the comforts and jraried foods of the West, as it might well happen, with their large supplies of raw material, such as iron, that they might be incited, after supjjSying their local demands, to beeomie serious rivals toi all the We'-lern countries in the manufacture and. export of products which at present wc manufactured and supplied. The climate of China varied so much that in its confines there was evej’y opportunity for the production of most of the agricultural products in which Australasia excelled, and while the population would for many years absorb all the production, there might tonic a ti.ine when Chinese export goods might invade tne rest of the world. FIRST STF/AMER THIS WEEK. The steamer Sussex, the first vessel to be engaged in direct trade with the East, receuWy established by the Government, finish loading this week from the hour principal ports of the Dominion/, and leave from Dunedin for the Hast.