Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-j824f Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-16T01:16:39.363Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

The Common Market: Production and Trade

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  26 March 2020

R. L. Major
R. L. Major*
Affiliation:
National Institute of Economic and Social Research
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

This article examines trade and production figures for the Common Market countries before and after 1958. The Common Market can be said to have come into effect on 1 January 1959, when the first reductions were made in the internal tariff. But there was not in fact a great deal of discrimination against outsiders before the second set of reductions, on 1 July 1960. So far, these tariff changes do not seem to have had any great effect; other factors must have overborne them.

Type
Articles
Information
National Institute Economic Review , Volume 21 , August 1962 , pp. 24 - 36
Copyright
Copyright © 1962 National Institute of Economic and Social Research

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

(1) This is after allowing for the different experience in the Six, the United States and Britain in the 1958 recession.

(1) In particular, West Germany withdrew half the reduction in tariffs on imports from the outside world which had been made in 1957.

(1) Throughout this article ‘manufactured goods’ covers Sections 5 to 8 of the old Standard International Trade Classification. 1961 figures are partly estimated.

(2) The rise in the 1959 percentage is exaggerated. French devaluation at the end of 1958 brought about a fall in the dollar value of French imports of manufactures from the overseas franc area, and so raised the proportion coming from Common Market countries; further, the Saar was transferred to Germany, for trade statistical purposes, in the middle of 1959. France continued to take most of the Saar's output of base metals; so this flow of trade appeared in international trade statistics for the first time. In 1960, the continuing effect of these two factors was probably more than offset by the substantial once-and-for-all effect of the removal of quota restrictions on dollar imports; imports of aircraft from the United States were also particularly high in that year.

(3) Full figures for the exports of all manufacturing countries are not yet available, by destination, for 1961.

(1) This rather understates the generality of the French gains; in chemicals there was no change in her share, and in iron and steel the fall is explained by the transfer of the Saar to Germany (for trade statistical purposes) in mid-1959.

(1) The exception in the case of Germany may again be due to the transfer of the Saar. This will clearly have increased Germany's share of exports to the outside world, and reduced France's. Its net effect on inter-trade is rather doubtful. It increased Germany's share for base metals, but probably reduced it for other items.

(1) The disparities shown in table 7 seem big enough to justify the conclusion, though comparisons of different countries' export prices are apt to be misleading and the basis of the figures used here is by no means the same for all countries (see the footnotes to the table).

(2) The conclusion here is very much in line with that of Alexander Lamfalussy, ‘Europe's Progress : due to the Common Market?’, Lloyds Bank Review, October 1961.

(1) Yarn of wool and hair, ‘other’ yarn and thread, ‘other ‘textiles, organic chemicals, inorganic chemicals and’ other’ chemical products.

(1) Full figures of trade in both directions are available on request.

(1) There are, however, big discrepancies between the EEC countries' import figures used here and the corresponding UK export figures, which show a sizable increase between 1960 and 1961.