TARIFF: Nightgowns Up

Side by side in the New York Times one day last week appeared the follow-ing headlines:

WORLD MUST TRADE OR FIGHT, HULL SAYS

U. S. TARIFF BOOST WORRIES JAPANESE

In Manhattan Secretary of State Hull had delivered a rousing defense of the

New Deal’s policy of lowering tariffs by reciprocal trade treaties. In Washington, President Roosevelt had upped the tariff on Japanese cotton cloth by a thumping 42%.Certain results of this move will be to put more money in the pockets of U. S. textile millers, make U. S. consumers pay more for nightgowns, children’s underwear, men’s handkerchiefs. A possible result may be the loss to U. S. cotton-growersof an appreciable part of their best market. The President’s explanation of this set-back to his trade-expansion program was that he proposes to lower tariffs only on goods which will not harm U. S. industries, whereas imports of Japanese cloth were definitely harming one branch of the U. S. textile industry. Total U. S. imports of cotton cloth in 1935, of which Japan supplied about half, amounted to less than 1%, of domestic production. Textile millers clamoring for protection, however, complained that in their special lines—bleached, printed, colored and dyed goods—Japanese manufacturers furnished really stiff competition. Furthermore Japan, having cut heavily into the U. S.’s foreign markets for cotton cloth, upped its exports for U. S. domestic consumption from 36,000,000 sq. yd. in 1935 to 21,000,000 in the first three months of 1936. Against the $5,000,000 per year which the U. S. spends for Japanese cotton cloth, Japan spends about $110,000,000 per year for U. S. raw cotton. Last week news of the U. S. tariff boost caused Yoshihisa Shikamura, managing director of Japan’s great Fuji Gas Spinning Co., to exclaim: “Our cotton industry will suffer a severe blow, and it is necessary to take immediate countermeasures. It would be impossible to prohibit all American cotton imports, but we can reduce them by 20% or 30%, by substituting cotton from Egypt, Brazil, Manchukuo and China.”