138

INTERNATIONAL TRADE

Great Britain, on the other hand, must show under these conditions
 (the carrying all done in British vessels) an accentuated excess
of imports — a greater excess of imports than would appear on her
records if the carrying trade were equally divided. She must
have a real excess of imports of merchandise, not merely the
nominal excess which the statistical practice of itself tends to show.
Her recorded imports are doubly swelled ; first by the practice of
valuing them c.i.f., and second by the substantial fact that she
has payments to receive for the carriage of her exports.
Not all countries, however, follow the practice of valuing exports
one way, imports the other; and here the complication becomes
different. The United States, for example, instead of valuing
imports on the c.i.f. basis, values them as the exports are valued
in most other countries; that is, on the f.o.b. basis. Her statistics
 give the values of imports at the time and place of exportation
from the foreign country, not their values on arrival at the United
States ports.! Cost of carriage is ignored in the official records
of imports as well as of exports.
Here again we may consider the same two representative cases :
one in which the shipping trade is equally divided, the other in
which it is all in the hands of one country. Take the United States
and Great Britain, again, as Australia and Great Britain were
taken before. If, first, the carrying trade is equally divided
between the United States and Great Britain, and the charges on
this account just balance each other, the official statistics will
show, as regards exports and imports, an excess of imports for
Great Britain but for the United States imports just equal to the
exports — no difference either way. For the United States the
official showing will be in accord with the facts —a settled
equilibrium. But for Great Britain an excess of imports will be
shown; and that excess, so far from indicating an unsettled balance,
 will be but nominal. Great Britain will not in fact have any
payment to make to the United States; her imports will only seem
to exceed her exports.
1 This was the case, at least, for many generations. The tariff act of 1922, with
its novel provisions for a possible “United States’ valuation, brought about a
change for some portion (not considerable) of the imports.