In general the importance of consumer goods in world trade is declining. But this is not true of durable consumer goods. From 1937 to 1950 this group held its share of total trade in manufactured goods at about 7 per cent; from 1950 to 1957 the figure rose to 8 per cent; and in 1958—mainly because of the sharp rise in shipments of cars from Europe to the United States—it went up to nearly 9 per cent (table 9).
Britain's protective tariff on manufactured goods is, on balance, rather higher than the average level of tariffs imposed against non-members by our partners in EFTA, and than the average level of tariffs against non-members in the EEC countries. In this note, estimates are made of the direct effects on our exports and imports of manufactures of the tariff changes resulting from continued membership of EFTA and exclusion from EEC. The estimates, which relate wholly to the assumed effects of tariff changes on relative prices, are based on the trade flows in 1960 and on the general tariff position in that year. The calculation shows the effect on the 1960 volume of our trade in manufactures of all the tariff changes planned for the period up to 1970. Admittedly, these may not be the major factors determining the future development of trade patterns. In particular, the calculation excludes the further effects which would arise from differences in the rates of economic growth in EEC and EFTA during the rest of the decade, as well as from changes in our competitiveness apart from tariffs.
The purpose of this article is twofold. First, to examine the export prospects over the coming decade of some of the principal countries of the overseas sterling area; and, second, to assess the implications of such export prospects for the economic growth of a selection of the less-developed countries of the area between now and 1975.
The United Nations' Conference on Trade and Development now in session in Geneva is concerned essentially with the evolution of new policies for international trade which would assist the under-developed countries to expand substantially their current level of earnings from exports. The purpose of the present article is not to discuss the many alternative proposals which have been put forward at Geneva, but rather to examine the facts behind the slow growth in the export earnings of the underdeveloped countries over the past decade or so.
