TRADE WITH AMERICA.

Taranaki Daily News, 9 August 1921, Page 8

TRADE WITH AMERICA.

EMERGENCY TARIFF ACT. it DOMINION’S PRODUCTS. DUTIES NOT PROHIBITIVE. Any idea that the Emergency Tariff Act, which was brought into force in the United StatesSn May, is prohibitive in regard to the duties imposed, is erroneous, according to the American Con-sul-General in New Zealand, Mr. D. F. Wilbur. Discussing the matter, he said that the reason the Act was passed was that conditions were such that more revenue had to be obtained. There was uo time to study every point as closely as for a permanent Bill drafted under ordinary conditions, and therefore the Emergency Act was confined to a few articles. There was no intention of making the duties prohibitive. The object of the Act was to produce revenue, and to impose prohibitive duties would defeat that object. They might just as well put everything on the free list as do that. < What the United States needed she had got to get, said Air. Wilbur, whether she bought in New Zealand, the Argentine. Brazil, Canada, or Australia, and she recognised that she had to pay the market price. Furthermore, the people of America were quite willing to pay it. American buyers were purchasing wool at every sale thereof in New Zealand, and shipping it to the United States, and they would continue to do this in spite of the Emergency Act. American purchasers of frozen meat, also, would buy just as much under the new Act as under the old tariff conditions, if they were allowed the same privileges in connection with business done in New Zealand as were given to the five or six New Zealand meat companies with branches in New York. Mr. Wilbur went on to say that the Emergency Tariff Act was only operative for six months, and therefore had but four months to run. By that time, the permanent Tariff Act, which had already passed the Lower House, would have become law. Under the latter there might be reductions of duties, or in some instances increases, but he was confident that it would not be prohibitive, because to make it so would be a suicidal policy. DUTIES WHICH AFFECT NEW ZEALAND. The Emergency Act. merely imposed temporary duties upon certain agricultural products. In so far as they might affect New Zealand, these duties were:

Wheat, 35 cents, per bushel; wheat flour and Semolina. 20 per cent, ad valorem; corn or maize, 15 cents per bushel of 561 b.; beans, 2 cents per lb; potatoes. 25 cents per bushel of 601 b; onions, 40 cents per bushel of 571 b; live cattle, 30 per cent, ad valorem; live sheep one-year-old and over, 2 dollars per head, less than one-year-old, 1 dollar per head; fresh and frozen beef, veal, mut ton, lamb, and pork, 2 cents per lb; meats of all kinds, prepared or preserved, 25 per cent ad valorem; cattle an’, sheep and other stock imported for breeding purposes, duty free; wool, unwashed, 15 cents per lb, washed 30 ccnt-4 scoured 45 cents; wool when advanced in any manner or by any process ot manufacture beyond the washed or scoured condition, and manufactures of which wool is the component material of chief value, 45 cents per lb, ; n addition to the rates of duty imposed thereon by existing law; apples, 30 cents per bushel; butter and substitutes therefor, 6 cents per lb; cheese and substitutes therefor, 23 per cent ad valorem, preserved an<l condensed milk, 2 cents per lb, including coverings; sugar of milk, 5 cents per lb. ANTI-DUMPING CLAUSE OF THE ACT. Mr. Wilbur said that he believed the. exportation from New Zealand to the United States of pelts, hides, rabbit skins, butter, and cheese, would be no more materially affected under the Emergency Act than under the former tariff conditions. The permanent Act would, he was sure, in no way interfere with exports from the. Dominion. Referring to the anti-dumping clause in the Emergency Tariff Act, the ConsulGeneral stated that this provided that whenever the Secretary of the Treasury, after investigation, found that an industry in the United States was being, or was likely to be, injured, or was prevented from being established, because of the importation into the United States of foreign merchandise, of a kind being sold, or likely to be sold, in that country, at. less than the foreign market value ’or dhe cost of production, he should make such finding public for the guidance of the appraising officers. Thereafter, all such merchandise should be subject to a special dumping duty equal to the difference between the exporter’s sale price and the foreign market value. There were, also provisions in the Act for allowances to be made under special circumstances.