Wairarapa Times-Age MONDAY, JUNE 22, 1942. TRADE AFTER WE WAR.

Wairarapa Times-Age, 22 June 1942, Page 2

Wairarapa Times-Age MONDAY, JUNE 22, 1942. TRADE AFTER WE WAR.

astonishingly limited and rather distorted anticipatory 1 view of problems of economic adjustment that will arise after the war was taken the other day by a metropolitan newspaper in some references to future trade. Having said that Great. Britain, the United States, the Soviet Union and other nations were already planning for the future and that “New Zealand must be ready to fit into the general scheme,” the journal in question went on to observe that if. Britain was to recover from the tremendous load imposed by the war, markets for her manufactured goods would be essential and that New Zealand, in common with the other Dominions, must play her part in establishing those markets. Only by selling her manufactured goods can Great Britain buy the food and raw material that she needs. If this involves a readjustment of New Zealand's internal economy, then that must be faced, and it must be faced as part of the general rehabilitation problem. It is no doubt a matter of common agreement that we ought to buy from Britain the largest possible proportion of our imports and that we have a common interest with her in doing so, but the suggestion that our national economic outlook must be’ dominated by the duty of buying manufactured goods from Britain —-that our infernal economy must be readjusted if necessary to enable us to perform that duty—implies a state of economic vassalage ■which happily is not proposed anywhere in the world outside the Axis circle. It is the policy of the Nazis that all the countries brought under their sway should be restricted to a course of economic development dictated by Germany. Under the Atlantic Charter, all countries, including those we are now fighting, are promised access on equitable terms to raw materials, but there is no proposal that small or partlydeveloped countries should be made economically subject to those at a more advanced stage, of development, On the contrary, any such proposal would'be flatly at. variance with the spirit of the Atlantic Charter and the principles it embodies and expresses. Nothing is more certain than that the war is giving a great ''impetus to the permanent expansion of manufacturing industries in the Dominions. It would be idle and childish to suggest that New Zealand should be denied the right to participate in this development, since the effect evidently would be to condemn us to chronic conditions of low population, weakness and relative poverty. The grand aim of post-war economic policy must be to make an end, in the interests of mankind, at large, of hindrances to production. In any conditions that have existed for a good many years past, or can be envisaged, there are limits to the amount of primary produce this country can sell overseas. AVe can buy imports, and pay for them, only with the trade balance that is left after discharging external debt and other charges. The possibility of enlarging our total, volume of production is limited, however, only by the existence and availability of the factors of production—labour, land, materials, power and so on. It would be merely foolish to allow these resources in any degree to lie fallow, for the reason that this or that article, can be produced more cheaply overseas than it can be produced here, or for any other reason. It is of course true that the trade relations with Britain which mean so much to this country are liable to be influenced profoundly by post-war international economic adjustments. How far the nations will be able to go in agreement on matters of trade and economic adjustment remains to be seen, but it is certain that great efforts will be made by some of the nations concerned to induce Britain and the Dominions to abandon, or to modify very considerably, the policy of Imperial preference. It seems likely, however, that these efforts will fail unless important'markets now closed, wholly or in part, to the products of Britain and her Dominions are opened. Far-reaching changes are possible from the conditions of pre-war trade, but whatever these changes may amount to the ruling principle of New Zealand’s economic policy, ■ like that of any other self-respecting country, must be a determination to make full and worthy use of its total resources.