Recent Trends in World Trade

Abstract

The principal aim of this paper is to highlight some of the major trends in the pattern of world trade over the past decade, with special regard to the trading relationships between the industrial countries and the primary-producing areas. The latter group should, more strictly, be called the ‘primary-exporting’ countries, since it includes countries — like Australia and New Zealand — whose economies are now largely industrialized, as well as mainly agricultural economies, like the poorer, under-developed countries. Industrial countries, in this context, include Japan with a relatively low national income per head.