General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade

The most recent report by the Contracting Parties to the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) opened with a survey of developments in the structure and pattern of international trade. After exceeding $100 billion, an all-time high, in 1957, the value of world exports had dropped sharply, by about 6 percent, in the first half of 1958, but had recovered nearly half of that loss in the second half of that year. If the effect of price movements was eliminated, on die other hand, the volume (as differentiated from the value) of world exports in the second half of 1958 established a new all-time record, even exceeding, if only by a fraction, the preceding peak which was reached in the second half of 1957. In the movements of international trade and of world output, the role played by the United States had continued to be predominant, although the United States was steadily losing in relative importance in world production, because output elsewhere was rising faster. Although the unsettled economic conditions, especially in North America, and the slowing down of economic growth elsewhere during the two years under consideration had turned out, after the event, to be less disastrous in their general effect upon world production and world trade than might have been expected, it was true that the decline in the share that exports from die nonindustrial to the industrial areas represented in the world total continued further. The relatively well maintained value of imports, moreover, together with a relatively falling value of exports, had given rise in recent years to a growing adverse balance on merchandise account for the nonindustrial areas. Their total import surplus continued at, and even slightly increased beyond, the impressive level of 1957—in fact nearly reaching $4 billion—although the various groups of countries within this category shared very unevenly in this total.