88 trade ministers managed on the 29th of
November 1982 to paper over their differences and bring
to a close the meeting of G.A.T.T. called for by the
U.S., which was complaining of unfair practices by
certain countries (including those of the E.E.C.) in
increasing the level of their exports though for example,
agricultural subsidies. This confrontation could achieve
nothing because the meeting did not address itself to the
real causes of the world crisis which has so sharply
reduced the volume of trade. Among these causes one could
mention :
- the accelerating pace of technical change in
industry and agriculture, leading to increased
productivity per man and at least to a temporary
unemployment,
- the nea-saturation of the rich countries as far as
the market for cars and domestic appliances is
concerned,
- the last replacement of traditional raw material
such as iron by new ones such as plastics or aluminum,
leading to a shrinking market for some older
industries such as steel manufacture,
- the transfer of industrial jobs, some countries
using under-paid labor which enables them successfully
to challenge older producing countries,
- the inadequacy, in certain countries, of education
and retraining and of job-mobility,
- the virtual absence in today's world of a global
monetary system but, instead, floating exchange rates
; a national currency (the dollar) being used almost
as the sole reserve currency, leading to complications
and uncertainty in international trade,
- the selfish and short-sighted policy of the
well-off countries in dealing with the developing
countries, refusing then a stable and remunerative
price for their basic exports and sufficient and to
allow real development, thus preventing these
countries from becoming new and expanding markets for
the products of the industrialized world ;
- the enormous and socially useless expenditure on
armaments and the arms race,
- the refusal to look at the world economic problem
posed by the fantastic output of industrial
robots.
Instead of closing in on themselves and accusing one
another of protectionism, nation states would do better
to try to reach an agreement on a global scale to put an
end to the real causes of the crisis, which causes are
most planetary in nature. Is it not clear that, to obtain
the result hoped for, the states must accept some form of
supranational order ?
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