Structural Aspects of Third World Trade: Some Trends and Some Prospects

Abstract

The New International Economic Order which has been so vigorously supported by Third World spokesmen in international conferences in recent years is not a target which, like landing a man on the moon, will be attained through a concentrated uni-directional push on the part of all those concerned with it. In the rough and tumble of international diplomacy it will only be achieved — if indeed it ever moves beyond rhetoric — by a series of reforms, most, of themselves, fairly small in impact; progress is bound to be punctuated by many backward steps. While all the pulling and tugging goes on over a common fund, a code of conduct for technology transfer, the rewriting of Article XIX of the GATT, the introduction of an AID-SDR link, etc., not to speak of the detailed deals on sugar price stabilization, market access for footwear, revised Lome Conventions and so forth, the world of international commerce and finance does not stand still. Changes in the international order may take place without any particular reference to the agenda of the New International Order which are important enough to dwarf in significance the negotiated agreements over which the diplomats strain. One must beware of devoting so much attention to the daily struggle to achieve slow and probably marginal improvements through North-South intergovernmental negotiation that one misses the momentous changes that are occurring with an independent momentum of their own.