Le Nord : revue internationale des Pays de Nord - 01.06.1938, Side 168

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LE NORD
customs union with inter-Scandinavian free trade and a common
commercial policy.
The increase of the home market which would be brought
about by a customs union would increase the potentialities of the
Northern industries; it would thus benefit all the Northern coun-
tries, though probably not all of them to the same extent. The
localization of industries within a future Northern customs area
of this type would present a very complicated problem. The con-
siderable consumptive power of Denmark, together with her rela-
tively very great supplies of labour, would exercise a certain at-
traction, which would especially be felt by those industries whose
choice of locality is principally determined by the nearness of
markets and the abundance of the labour supply, and in whose
economy the haulage charges for raw materials and the expenses
of obtaining power play a less decisive part.
This applies e. g. to the textile and engineering industries and
to ship-building. Danish industry would benefit from our num-
erous good ports. But the other Northern countries are not in-
ferior to Denmark as regards ports, they are far richer in domestic
raw materials, and they have enormous reserves of water power.
On the whole, therefore, a customs arrangement like the one
discussed above would probably benefit Swedish industry most.
Already as it is, Sweden is, and has long been, the most industri-
alized of the Northern countries. Conversely, Swedish, Norwe-
gian, and Finnish agriculture would suffer from the competition
of Danish agricultural produce.
The greatest difficulty would, however, lie in the fact that
such a customs arrangement would not mean any very consider-
able increase of the marketing possibilities for those articles which
natural conditions have made the specialities of the countries in
question: Swedish, Finnish, and Norwegian wood and paper,
Swedish ores and iron manufactures, Norwegian fishery produce
and electro-chemical and electro-metallurgical manufactures will
always have to look for their principal markets outside the North,
and the same will necessarily apply to Danish agriculture, even
after the establishment of a common Northern customs area.
Danish corn might perhaps gain a footing on the Norwegian
market, but only if it was accorded preferential treatment as
against overseas corn, and this could not avoid giving rise to con-
siderable dissatisfaction in Norway, because it would be felt there
as a return to the Danish corn monopoly of the i8th century.