Rensselaer Journal, Volume 11, Number 5, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 11 July 1901 — Russia and the Bounty. [ARTICLE]

Russia and the Bounty.

Unless Russia actually pays her sugar refiners to export their product our law does not subject her sugar to discriminating duties. But she does not pay them. Sho simply refunds them the amount they have already paid in domestic taxes. She doesn’t even do that completely. She gives them certificates of export which may be used In paying their taxes a year later, but which are worth 8 per cent less than cash on the spot. If Russia did not collect any tax on sugar at all nobody would contend that she paid a bounty on exports. If she had a system by which sugar designed for export was shipped directly abroad without paying a tax, while the tax was collected on that retained, It would be a bounty. But because she collects her domestic taxes from all sugar alike, and then gives them back to exporters, not in caßh, but in the shape cf certificates receivable for next year’s taxes, Mr. Gage insists that she pays a bounty. If the remission of a tax is a bounty we may as well prepare for a tariff war with every country on earth, for there is not one of them that does not give Its exports that chance to compete on even terms In foreign markets.