INTER-EMPIRE TRADE.

Taranaki Daily News, 3 February 1921, Page 4

INTER-EMPIRE TRADE.

CANADA AND NEW ZEALAND. DOMINION’S COMMERCE GROWING. The development of trade between New Zealand and Canada was reviewed by the Canadian Trade Commissioner (Mr. W. A. Beddoe), who is at present viaiting New Plymouth, in rhe course of an interview with a Daily News reporter yesterday.

Mr. Beddoe remarked on the steady advance of business being done by the two Dominions, with each other, and discussed confidently the proepects of greater expansion. Since 1910, Mr. Beddqe stated, when the trade of both Dominions was small, there has never been a year up to 1920 in which the interchange of commerce has not increased substantially, and in the year just passed the imports from Canada were the largest in the history of the country. It was satisfactory for New" Zea-: land commercial men to know that the exports from this country had advanced similarly, and at present the trade is almost equal on both sides.

The idea of the Canadian Government in appointing a New Zealand representative ifl to secure the exchange of views between the commercial men of both countries, and another item in fostering inter-Dominion trade is ’the reciprocal preferential tariff existing between New Zealand and Canada. Mr. Beddoe states that there is no doubt the trade is capable of considerable increase both ways, but, as at present the two Dominions were in a transitory stage, between the end of the war and the permanent establishment of new conditions, it was difficult in the meantime to know in which branch th’ twde would extend.

In trading with Canada the New Zealand importer secures an advantage in the exchange rates, as the value of the sovereign is 4.25 dollars, as against 3.75 in America, but of far greater importance was. the fact that in dealing commercially with each other Canada and Now Zealand were fostering Imperial trade and building up the Empire. As a manufacturing country Canada had a sale for their factory outputs in New Zealand and in return bought from this country the products of the primary industry which they could not grow. It was along these lines that the trade would run.