World Trade For Better Living (1951)

[Music] Oh [Applause] you you [Music] this is my ship I've skippers with many years sailed all over a lot of ocean she's a good ship but you will find her life in any port from Baltimore to Singapore and back watch our cargo well it's anything that goes into trade anything that anyone wants to buy yourself anywhere in the world and you know people almost everywhere trades with other countries they have to to get what they want which they need to people in every couldn't live as they do without world threat of places in my time I've asked questions and this is what they say trade with the world well captain here in Britain we depend on it you know after all when we shop forbidden meat or anything else in the way of food product we are likely to find it comes from Denmark or Australia or South America what small of stuff we work with in our factories often comes from other countries - yes putting it as India's I can I'd say we in Europe have to trade or die you say it's good they need captain here in South America we have more than enough of that plenty of good beef cattle and grains and other crops but we too must trade for we need manufactured goods and most of these we must get from you we may not great to live but we must raise to live better live better to in capital that is our great need here in the lands of Asia we are poor by your standards most of us are peasants yet we grow scarcely enough to feed out many people as for our other needs most of us still use the simple things we make ourselves if you have to live better you must have many of the products of your Western world we need goods from your machines and we also need the machines to make more Goods for ourselves for all this we must trade well captain here in the United States we sell them think about the need for tray except perhaps when we're looking at British woolen and when we're trying out a new perfume from France of course we know about coffee and sugar and products like these but what would living be like without all the other things we important there's the box side we put into aluminum wire there's a natural rubber and other raw materials and the manufactured products from abroad that we depend on for everyday living for instance how many people driving cars know that some 200 materials from other countries go to the making of them believe me we need Freight as much as anyone yes trades an important thing most of the world's people ties it together closer than we realize for instance he just mentioned sugar well we just brought in the cargo of sugar from down the Caribbean you know much of the word sugar supply comes from the West Indies and many's the time I've seen the people that work on the great plantations cutting the cane and hauling it into the mill this is where the trader is taking over they ship most of it to Europe and North America we bring it north to the ports now over there they brought in another very necessary cargo a shipment of tin all the way from the mines of Malaya here's where we get more than half the world supply if he went for these men in Malaya who dig the ore and wash and work it into pure tin we'd be hard put to it for the familiar stuff that we use to cover all those tin cans but now we come along I'll show you something else about trade this country exports are great many essential items to right here for instance they're taking on a cargo of weak and you know we in North America in the Argentine one it's a good part of the world's wheat supply we grow most of it out on the western plains wheat by the millions of bushels yes here's grain enough to take care of the needs of goodly numbers of the world's people now here they're taking on a cargo of cotton this is one of the biggest articles in trade and a good part of world supply is produced here in the United States not long ago it took a lot of people working by hand to pick the cotton in these fields but today one man can do the job with a picking machine after they've taken the crop to the local gin where it's cleaned of seeds a good deal of it is shipped along to the ports bound for Manchester and other textile centers where they make it into cloth you know it takes a great many people doing a great many things to keep the world's trade moving if we could eavesdrop on all the trading going on everywhere in the world today it had probably sound like this no single cloth November 26 Arg Android president wrote a same Capricia dare I tell you it was a dirty 200 tempted con - the elements yes Beatrice ll get smoked - chase National Bank in order your necessary and oh yes captain the trade of the world is a vast affair but its principles are just the same as trade in your own hometown in every community in the world you have a division of labor with different people producing different kinds of goods and exchanging them with one another for if everyone tried to produce everything he needed no one would have enough of anything now the same principle applies to the world community with people of different countries also producing and exchanging different kinds of goods certain areas contain vital raw materials such as the tin or the oil the copper or the cotton the wool the natural rubber the manganese and other products the world needs there are also certain areas most suitable for particular crops such as the bananas and the coffee the sugarcane and the cocoa the tea and the needs the dairy products and the grains and other necessary foodstuffs this makes for specialization in the world's production most of the world produces various raw materials and foodstuffs but little manufactured goods these areas produce most of the world's manufactured goods the people of these industrial areas have to obtain many of their foodstuffs and raw materials from the countries that produce them likewise they supply manufactured goods to the people of the rest of the world but the greatest volume of world trade is between the industrial nations themselves these nations producing the most demand the highest standard of living and thus have the greatest demand for goods for in the world as in our own community the more goods we produce and exchange the more goods we have to consume the higher our standard of living can be right that's why I can't understand why so many people seem to be against trade I think of it every time I see the customs inspectors checking cargo here or at any other port all these regulations on imports and exports these time schedules these quarter systems and embargoes all these restrictions on certain types of cargo just to keep goods out of the country it doesn't make sense to me well captain the nations of the world working together in such international conferences as this have recently done much to lift the barriers to trade many nations have agreed to lower tariffs and reduce controls while programs such as the Marshall Plan have helped many nations to restore and increase production laying the basis for a healthier world economy but International Cooperation depends upon public opinion and when citizens anywhere meet to talk about trade that discussion often goes like this and we we're concerned with these editorials you've been running these peaches on trade gentlemen I wonder whether you really read these editorials of mine I suppose it's natural for people to want protection against competition but when it comes to our farm trade you want to remember that we sell other nations as well as to buy panels when people like you put on the pressure for more protection asking for higher tariffs and other restrictions on foreign goods and people and other countries do the same they just don't buy our goods why not they need our goods they're by them not if they can help it for one thing they face the problem of the balance of payments with us balancing their payments what was the balance of payments now here maybe this will give you a rough idea that my point is simply this in the long run other nations pay for their goods with the goods and services they sell us they can't do this profitably if we raise high tariffs against their goods or if we use quota systems to limit the amount of goods we buy or if we refuse to kraid with other nations except the ones that will barter with us barter over fire well when a government orders it makes deals directly with other governments to swap certain specific amounts of goods now just about every nation in the world today is seriously hampering prayed through one or another of these methods so what's the answer Emery just open our doors to everybody's good now but the problem is to encourage a growing volume of trade under conditions reasonably good for the people of our nations and just how can we do that well look here one necessary condition is to do away with fire and encourage many-sided trade moving relatively freely among all nations let's consider a single situation barter is two-way trade now suppose a nation like Denmark is buying machinery from the United States on a strictly two-way basis she may get dollars to buy this machinery by selling goods directly to the United States however this two-way trade enables her to buy only this much machinery but suppose on the other hand the United States pays dollars to a country like Malaya in exchange for such products as Tim Malaya in turn pays some of these dollars to Britain in exchange for her manufactured goods and Britain pays some of these dollars to Denmark in exchange for dairy products this way Denmark would have the money to buy much more from the United States than she could trading directly and this has been a many sided transaction giving more goods and services to every one of the nations concerned yes I can see that but what about the competition between labor with low living standards and later with high living standards to get into trouble err well in the short run we might have to consider that but in the long run we must remember that people who produce any article efficiently have no trouble from competition now this is true of highly productive workers in mass production industries of course but it's also true of the people who are producing types of goods that cannot be easily produced anywhere else in the world and it's true of workers who are producing articles requiring special skills that have not been developed in other countries in other words let's raise our productivity everywhere and let the people of every nation give us the things they can produce best that's sensible yes gentlemen is sensible for wherever people produce efficiently they are adding to the world's wealth and whether they are weaving nylon in America or weaving rugs in India they are producing goods useful to us all the world is rich in its vast variety of resources and strong in its reservoir of human labor able and willing to transform them into goods all we need are the tools and the machines to produce and the skills to give the world a better product from the Australian ranchers drawing the world to the Danish farmer producing a baton from the workers packing deep in Argentina to the craftsmen making machine parts in Sweden everyone in the world has this special contribution to make to the world's wealth its supply of goods and services and when through trade with one another we exchange the goods and services we produce we are making better use of the world's wealth making more goods and services available to all satisfying more of the wants of people in industrial ations and fulfilling more of the needs of people in less developed countries giving us all a higher standard of living yes more production and better exchange provides more goods and services to more people everywhere in the world and we'll see do they get it that's what I need about trade the more of it there is the better it is the you and me and everyone else we're all in the same boat and sheet sales steadiest when she followed down and full steam ahead [Music]