Exceptional importance attaches to the export conference of the British Chambers of Commerce. Trade at one time followed the flag. It now follow the commercial propagandist for whom the way has been cleared by political and economic infiltration. The new German technique has met with a success that this country can no longer afford to ignore, states the "Financial News." Dr. Funk, the German Minister of Economics, can boast that he has "laid the foundations of an economic axis from the North Sea to the Black Sea. recent loan to Turkey and long-term credit to Poland have marked the completion of a task which leaves Germany master of Central European markets and able to exert a decisive influence in many others.
In 1997, Poland imported £7,623,101 of British goods, Austria £2,517,110, Hungary £585,202, Czechoslovakia £3,167,699, Yugoslavia £1,083,243, Greece £3,178,879, Roumania £1,- 907.670, and Turkey £1,572,086. This makes a total of £21,643,990, or 36 per cent. of U.K. exports and re-exports in 1937. The proportion is not, in itself, large and the trade is not entirely lost to this country. But this growing economic domination of Germany is one of the most important single factors to be reckoned with when considering the outlook for British exports.
It is not only int Central Europe that Germany is strengthening her hold on export markets. For some time past the South American Republics have been succumbing to the blandishments of German trade emissaries, to barter arrangements and special exchange facilities. Thus, German exports to Brazil rose from 59 million reichsmarks in the first six months of 1936 to 103 million reichsmarks in the first six months of the current year. Germany now accounts for over 10 per cent. of the goods purchased by Argentina compared with Britain's share of over 18 per cent: she is increasing her share of
Chile. the trade with Uruguay and with As Mr. R. S. Hudson declared recently: "We are having to meet abroad the competition, nct merely of individual firms, but of organized industries and, in some instances, of nations industrially organized to secure the greatest possible volume of export trade." In addition to Germany, there are Japan, working a low-wage, long-hour labour standard, and the US.A., with the backing of a huge protected home market. Is it possible for British export industries to fight, alone, these formidable adversaries? To some extent, it is, as the experience of strongly organized industries such as the iron and steel trade has shown, But in other instances the problem is more dificult, At the same time, a satisfactory answer must be found for the questions posed by Sir Granville Gibson at the Chambers of Commerce meeting. British industries must see that at every point in the trode process—manufacture, distribution and sales—their efüciency is at least equal to that of their competitors.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.