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DIAMONDS COME TO AMERICA
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10-per-cent
reduction in all diamond tariffs, so that today rough diamonds enter
the United States duty free, while cut diamonds pay a 10-per-cent duty.
And you rarely hear stories of diamond smuggling any more.
But
that headache hardly had been eliminated when the importers began to
face another one: the consequences of the second World War. Think of
this: Imports of most gems, except cut diamonds, bulked larger during
the first quarter of 1941 than during the same period of 1940. But the
value of all kinds of cut gems dropped, during the same period, from
$11,529,076 in 1940, to $7,820,795, and the greatest part of this
decrease was due to a 55-per-cent reduction in American imports of cut
diamonds.
All
this, of course, is due to the shutting off of the Amsterdam and
Antwerp products. According to a German journal dated May, 1941, only
300 diamond cutters were busy in Amsterdam (an exaggeration, probably,
half of them working only half-weeks). "Since no decision has been made
about the freeing of cut diamonds in stock," the magazine went on to
say, "trade in Amsterdam has come to a complete standstill." Mr. Fred
Cole, editor of the Jewelers Circular-Keystone, a leading mouthpiece
of the jewelry industry, believes that this reluctance of the Germans
to sell cut diamonds suggested the possibility that they contemplated
diverting them for industrial purposes.
Belgium,
on the other hand, is credited with supplying us with 31,743 carats
worth $1,886,265 (wholesale) during the first three months of
1941—later figures would show a sharp decrease—but how much of this was
"newly cut" and how much salvaged before the invasion of May, 1940, is
a guess. There were increases—substantial ones—in imports from the
Union of South Africa and Palestine and the
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