General Agreement on Trariffs and Trade

The fourth annual report prepared for the Contracting Parties to the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) was divided into three sections, dealing respectively with 1) recent developments in the structure and pattern of international trade, 2) developments in commercial policy, and 3) the principal activities of the Contracting Parties during the period under review. International trade during 1955, the report stated, had established new records both in value and in volume; in the first half of the year, the value of world exports had exceeded $80,000 million (at an annual rate), and in the second half it rose by a further $5,700 million, thus reaching a value about 13 percent above that of 1951. Taking the year as a whole, the value of world exports had been about $83,300 million. In terms of volume, the increase had been even greater, since export prices had been appreciably below the level of 1951, and in the second half of 1955 the volume of world exports had reached a level exceeding that of 1951 by 21 percent. The increase in volume had also represented a further acceleration in the speed of its growth. There had been three major developments in international trade in 1955, the report stated: 1) the rise in value of world exports in 1955 again had been mainly accounted for by trade among industrial countries, while the relative importance of the non-industrial areas had continued to decline; 2) the increase in the export trade of the industrial countries in 1955 had been shared by North America and by the other industrial areas, the revival of North America's exports being due largely to a growing dependence of western Europe on supplies of raw material and fuels from that source; and 3) in 1955, many industrial countries had relied more heavily on imports from the most economic sources of supply, and had therefore adopted more liberal import policies.