FOREIGN TRADE ZONES 53

given in the reports of consular officers, supplemented by data from
other sources, indicates that the privileges of the free zones of Europe
have aided materially in bringing new business to the ports in which
they are located. Ports having free deposits or zones with good warehouse
 accommodations have attracted imports for storage and later
reshipment either to foreign territory or to the interior for domestic
consumption.

DEVELOPMENT OF FOREIGN TRADE IN FREE PORTS

Independent of the receipt and shipment of foreign goods in the
ree port is the question of its influence upon the foreign trade of the
country, i. e., the imports for consumption and the domestic exports.
The influence of European free ports upon such trade is of interest
in considering the probable influence of free zones on the foreign trade
of the United States. It is especially interesting to note that the
results have varied greatly and that some free zones have apparently
not exercised any important influence upon foreign trade.
Consul General Letcher in his report on Copenhagen states that
Danish merchants have profited to a certain extent from the transshipment
 of foreign goods to the Baltic States, particularly those in
the south, but this trade has not developed in accordance with expectations
 entertained during and immediately following the war. To
quote from his report,

In the first place, the easy accessibility to Baltic ports of small vessels carrying
'ull cargoes from the ports of northern Europe and the rail facilities offered from
central Europe leave no occasion for the use of large vessels which would break
cargo at Copenhagen. The nearness of the free port of Hamburg, which has
2asy access to the Baltic through the Kiel Canal; the recent establishment of a
free port at Malmo, Sweden, just across the sound from Copenhagen; rail connec-“ion
 between Sweden and central Europe by steam ferry between Sassnitz,
Germany, and Traelleborg, Sweden; the accessibility of central Europe to the
Baltie through Stettin, Danzig, and Koenigsberg, and the easy accessibility to
the Baltic of light French and English craft, are factors of such importance as
almost to dispose of the advantages of using the Copenhagen free port as an
sntrepdt for the distribution of European goods. The United States is thus left
a8 practically the only manufacturing country of capital relationship to foreign
‘rade which could advantageously use the Copenhagen free port, but the postwar
 establishment of a direct freight service between American and Baltic ports
and the maintenance by a Danish line of a similar service through Danzig have
greatly reduced the profits derivable from this source. The postwar developments
 in Russia have likewise greatly affected the Copenhagen free port’s
sxpansion.