Originally published in the Manchester Guardian on 27 May 1933
Mr. J. H. Grey, the chairman of the Cotton Spinners and Manufacturers' Association and ex-president of the Joint Committee of Cotton Trade Organisations, in an interview yesterday, said:
The Japanese are undoubtedly pushing goods of all kinds in all world markets at prices arousing worldwide apprehension. They ought not to deceive themselves by supposing that this is simply a Lancashire, or even a British, view. Other European countries are quite as much concerned.
The view is held in some high foreign quarters that Japanese competition methods are a menace to the stability of Western civilisation. The Japanese should realise that European countries, and probably others, will be forced to take notice of the consequences which Japanese trading has had upon their national economy, and that action of some kind is inevitable. The Dutch, the French, and the Italians, among others, are already giving close attention to this problem.
There can be no question that in many markets the Japanese are selling goods below the cost of production, even after allowing for the depreciation of the yen, and at prices which there is no need for them to accept. The hostility which has been caused by this policy should not be ascribed to the jealousy of less efficient competitors. No one grudges them their ability to compete effectively with the advantage which they have of low wages combined with modern equipment. But when such advantages are deliberately halved, from the Japanese point of view, by currency manipulation, in order to make a wholesale assault on world markets and to establish the predominance of Japanese goods, the rest of the world cannot sit idly by.
It should be clearly understood in Japan that the action recently taken in India was not brought about at the request of Lancashire but was the result of spontaneous efforts by the Indian mill owners in defence of their own interests. There is no racial or national hostility in the matter at all.
The opposition which the Japanese are now encountering is a movement of economic self-defence against a policy which threatens the industrial structure of half the world. Japan is not in a position to supply all the world's needs, and the only result of her present policy will be to dislocate the machinery by which other countries supply their contribution to the world's needs. It is in the interests of Japan, as well as of her competitors, that she should work in harmony, instead of in violent conflict, with other industrial countries.