Wairarapa Times-Age TUESDAY, JUNE 1, 1943. POSTWAR TRADE AND INDUSTRY.

Wairarapa Times-Age, 1 June 1943, Page 2

Wairarapa Times-Age TUESDAY, JUNE 1, 1943. POSTWAR TRADE AND INDUSTRY.

WITH reference not only to safeguards against aggression, but to post-war economic organisation and trade, it is being affirmed in various quarters at present that no part of the world can live separately and that in the days to come the welfare of all nations will depend on effect being given to the desire expressed in the Atlantic Charter

to bring about the fullest collaboration between all nations in the economic field with the object 1 of securing, for all, improved labour standards, economic adjustment and social security.

It is more than time that serious efforts should be made in this country, and in others, to translate generalities of this kind — admittedly admirable in spirit and intention —into concrete and explicit terms. If we are to map out a progressive policy in the spirit of the Atlantic Charter we must know what economic collaboration is to imply in relation, for example, to external trade and to the development of internal industry. Obviously a determination of these questions does not depend on ourselves alone, but this makes the need of clear understanding greater and not less.

At the outset, we should discard resolutely some erroneous ideas which are being publicised rather freely, though they are evidently made possible only by an inadequate study of the problems involved. Not long ago, for instance, a Wellington metropolitan paper observed that: —

New Zealand thrives by selling to the outside world but has claimed the right to limit or bar the entry of other countries’ products . . .

A more egregiously unfair and inaccurate statement could hardly have been packed into a given number of words. The broad truth of the history of our pre-war trade is that, with and without regulation, we bought rather more imports from other countries than we could afford, or could pay for in the process of trade exchange. Over a reasonably extended period of years, that is to say, much of our buying of imports was made possible only by external borrowing. On the other hand, over a great part of the world tariff walls much higher than our own were set up against the entry of exports from this country..

The suggestion more or less clearly implied in the assertions quoted, and in others of a similar kind, that New Zealand might enter upon a state of economic bliss by allowing imports to pour in without let or hindrance is worthy only of Bedlam. The actual result of such a policy would be to bring about conditions of confusion, dislocation and ultimate destitution in which the Dominion, incidentally and inevitably, would be able to spend very much less on imports than it was spending in recent normal years.

International economic collaboration will, however, be both practicable and splendidly worth while if it can be developed on the lines sketched by the British Home Secretary (Mr Herbert Morrison) when he said in a speech some time ago:—

The old method, the method, of “beggar my neighbour,” is wrong ■and doomed, to failure as it has always failed. It is economic war, no matter how polite the names we give it. It will lead, as it always has led, to military war. It is based on the utterly false assumption that there is a fixed amount of world trade to be done and that if somebody else does it we won’t. The truth is that there lies before all nations the possibility of a tremendous expansion in world trade, as in industry at home.

Reluctant as some people may be to face the facts, it is most certainly by an expansion of industry at home —by developing the greatest practicable and profitable range of industrial production ■within its own borders —as well as by trading to the extent of its capacity, that New Zealand will be able at once to carry its war burdens and to approach the all-round improvement in economic and other'conditions envisaged in the Atlantic Charter