Economic Unpleasantness
Economic events, as is well known, never attract popular attention until they become so unpleasant that they cannot be ignored. That being so, it is doubtful whether the export figures for the month of April will be taken to be sufficiently startling to shock the man in the street out of his congenital fecklessness in these matters. But the drop of £22,5oo,000 compared with the March figure is serious. Nobody should underestimate its seriousness. The President of the Board of Trade certainly shows no signs of doing so. His speech at the banquet given by the Birmingham Chamber of Commerce to mark the British Industries Fair, although it never really struck at the root of the trouble, plainly recognised its existence. This is the worst piece of news About exports since the war. Taking the past two and a half years as a whole, there has been steady progress. The tendency has been firmly upwards, though there have been occasional interruptions. But there has been no set-back as marked as that which took place last month—not even in February, 1947, the month of the fuel crisis. What was more, imports did not fall greatly, and consequently the deficit on the balance of trade was heavy. There is no way of explaining away the bad news. None of the usual statistical anodynes will work ; exports per working day were 3.4 per cent. lower than in March. None of the special explanations—such as the fact that there was a reaction after the special effort to boost exports to South Africa in March—is sufficient. None of the .restrictions and other trade barriers which we are encountering in foreign markets is likely to come down. Competition from other exporters whose costs and prices are lower than ours—from Americans and Canadians for example—is likely to become keener as time goes on. Already we are priced out of a number of overseas markets. Opponents of the Government's policy of devoting scarce resources to luxuries we cannot afford have long been prophesying an unpleasant awakening. It looks as if the awakening is near.
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