The Daily Alaska empire., 1930-01-09
FOREIGN TRADE IN 1929.

The year 1929 was a record breaker in our foreign trade both exports and imports showing an increase over the preceding year and reaching totals which when adjustment is made for changes in the buying power of money, decidedly surpass any attained even during the war and the immediate postwar boom according to a New Year statement given out by the Department of Commerce. This grati- flying result was not brought about by any temporary causes It marks the continuance of a movement practically unbroken since 1921 and 1922 This move ment reflects the steadily growing efficiency of American industry in production and of American merchants in pushing sales It also indicates the high and advancing buying power of the people with the consequent increasing demand for those raw materials and foodstuffs, many of a luxury or semi luxury character which our country is unable to produce at all, only in insufficient quantities
 Just how much the foreign trade of 1929 sur passed that of the year before is not known at this writing If December shows the same figures as that month did in 1928, our total exports VIII amount to about $5,3oO00OO0O, or between 3 and 4 per cent more than during the preceding year, and our imports to about $4,45oOooOoo, an increase of per cent.
 Imports have increased more than exports there fore, the balance of comomdity trade in favor of the United States was somewhat less than in 1928. It was still very large however somewhere between $500 O0O GOO and S900000000 in value
 The gain in export trade for 1929 was confined, in the main. to the first four months of the year, during which foreign sales were nearly $3oo0oo- GOO greater than in the corresponding months of 1928 The remaining eight months showed either less increase actual decrease as compared with 1928
 As in most recent years the most conspicuous feature of the trade of 1929 the expansion in the exports of the products of factories. For the year a whole the foreign sales of semi manufactured and finished manufactures, (the lat ter by far the larger group in the neighbor- hood of $2250OO0000 This gain of ap proximately $500 O0O0o 10 per cent. over 1928 Year by year American manufactures have been growing in popularity in foreign markets. The United States leads the world as an exporter of factory products. Finished manufactures, which before the war represented only about three tenths of exports are half of the much larger total. The importance of this huge exportation of manufactured goods as a stablizer of innustry and employment is obviously very great.
 It is as yet too soon to make precise state ment to the change in the geographic distribu- ceding year. Figures for 10 months show an in- crease in the value of exports to all six of the continents with the highest percentage of gain in shipments to South America Sales to our northern neighbor, Canada, increased very greatly Those to Cuba and Mexico showed substantial increase dur ing 1929 against declines in several earlier years Imports from all the continents also greater in 1929 than the year before, and there no very conspicuous difference in the relative percent ages of gain AS usual, exports to Europe,