Dogma Documented

Despite the high stakes involved--1955 U.S. commercial exports ($14.3 billion) and imports ($11.4 billion) were the largest in history--the perpetual debate on U.S. tariffs is seldom illuminated by any fresh statistical documentation of the dogmatic claims of either low or high tariff men. Nearly two years ago the Minnesota Business Executives Research Committee, a study group sponsored by the University of Minnesota's School of Business Administration, decided that it was time to move the tariff controversy into the realm of local reality. Last week, after interviewing officials of about 400 Minnesota companies, the committee released an item-by-item survey of the probable effects on Minnesota's industry of a U.S. tariff reduction.

Gains & Losses. The committee discovered that many of the state's industries, such as iron ore mining and processing, the economic backbone of northern Minnesota, now have little or no tariff protection. Others, like the thriving apparel industry, specialize in products geared to ever-changing demands on the part of the U.S. consumer; because of their greater familiarity with the market, U.S. firms would continue to have an advantage over foreign competitors. All in all, tariff reduction would make little direct difference to 52 Minnesota industries employing 66% of the state's mining and manufacturing workers.

Another 26 Minnesota industries, accounting for 25% of the state's industrial labor, would directly benefit from liberalization of tariff laws. For instance, manufacturers of mining drills could, with tariffs off, sell more of them in the oil boom areas of central and western Canada.

Eleven industries, employing in 1947 about 7% of Minnesota's industrial labor, would be hurt by tariff reduction, the committee decided. Only three of the smallest of these would suffer serious damage. Some of the state's leather glove and belt manufacturers would be hard hit by foreign competition, and imports of cheap foreign china could cripple the pro duction of pottery, one of the principal industries of Red Wing (pop. 10,645).

Hardest hit of all would be Minnesota's four beet sugar refineries; unrestricted ad mission of Cuban sugar would wipe out the uneconomic growth of sugar beets by Minnesota farmers.

Weight of Evidence. The did not make as detailed a study of Minnesota agriculture as it had of industry.

The report conceded that freer would probably hit Minnesota harder than it would manufacturers,

the committee concluded, the was that "a general policy of gradual liberalization of U.S. trade policy seems likely to benefit Minnesota more in the run than to harm it."

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