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European integration and the integration of the world economy
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 26 October 2009
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When it became Britain's turn on 1 January 1977 to fill the presidency of the European Community for six months, it should have been the moment she had been waiting for, so long had been the struggle to join the Common Market in the first place. Much depended on how Britain filled the role. How much might be implicit at the end of this discussion of the state of the world economy as it approaches the 1980s. The world economy is in a serious malaise, but the malaise in the European Community has been of longer duration.
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References
page 55 note 1. The Times, 1 July 1976.
page 55 note 2. Address to the European Parliament, Strasbourg, 7 July 1976.
page 56 note 1. The argument in this section was first argued by the present writer in Hugh Corbet, ‘Political and Economic Perspectives on Trade between Developed Countries’, in A Foreign Economic Policy for the 1970s, Hearings before the Joint Economic Committee, Congress of United States (Washington: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1970), pp. 173–90Google Scholar.
page 56 note 2. The situation is not quite as simple as that, given the realpolitik interpretation briefly discussed later in this section.
page 56 note 3. For an anlysis of the free trade treaties negotiated by the remaining EFTA countries with the European Community, see Curzon, Victoria, The Essentials of Economic Integration: Lessons of EFTA. Experience (London: Macmillan, for the Trade Policy Research Centre, 1974), pp. 226–50CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
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page 57 note 2. Dahrendorf, Ralf, ‘Wieland Europa’, Die Zeit (Hamburg), 9 July and 16 July 1971Google Scholar.
page 58 note 1. Shonfield, Andrew, Europe: Journey to an Unknown Destination, Reith Lectures (London, 1974)Google Scholar, ch. 1.
page 59 note 1. These ‘shocks’ did not come as lightnings from the clear blue sky. They were largely provoked by the very governments most affected. Some of the shocks, like the oil crisis, were long in developing, but their development went unobserved.
page 59 note 2. This section draws on earlier writings, notably Corbet et al., Trade Strategy and the Asian-Pacific Region (London: Allen & Unwin, for the Trade Policy Research Centre, 1970)Google Scholar and Cairncross, Sir Alecet al., Economic Policy for the European Community: the Way Forward (London: Macmillan, for the Institut für Weltwirtschaft an der Universität Kiel, 1974)CrossRefGoogle Scholar, a report for which the present writer was co-rapporteur.
page 59 note 3. The shift from a European balance was discussed in Gelber, Lionel, ‘Canada's New Stature’, Foreign Affairs, (1946)CrossRefGoogle Scholar, and elaborated upon by the same writer in Reprieve from War (New York, 1950)Google Scholar.
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page 60 note 1. It might be noted in passing, that the realpolitik concept of integration, mentioned earlier, amounts to forming a cartel of governments which do not want to compete among themselves, but to control individually and jointly.
page 60 note 2. Johnson and Corbet, ‘Pacific Trade in an Open World’, Pacific Community, Apr. 1970.
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page 62 note 1. The whole subject of non-tariff distortions of international trade has become a major issue of multilateral commercial diplomacy and the subject of a growing literature. See, for example, Denton, Geoffrey, O'Cleireacain, Seamus and Ash, Sally, Trade Effects of Public Subsidies to Private Enterprise (London: Macmillan, for the Trade Policy Research Centre, 1975)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
page 63 note 1. The conditions for the successful cartellization of commodity supplies are analysed in Viner, , International Economics (Chicago, 1951)Google Scholar, chapter on ‘National Monopolies of Raw Materials’.
page 63 note 2. Robbins, Lionel, Economic Planning and International Order (London, 1937)Google Scholar.
page 63 note 3. Statement to the Contracting Parties of the GATT, Geneva, 23 Nov. 1976.
page 63 note 4. On this point, there are the United Kingdom's foreign-held sterling balances, which were suddenly presented in 1976 as if they were a major source of all the nation's problems. The British Government embarked on an effort to have them funded by another international loan, but the sterling balances are a liability only in a technical sense, for if the British economy was stable, or if there was a policy that conveyed the impression that the economy was heading towards stability, they would not be withdrawn.
Since the British Government must eventually work its way towards a ‘stable growth’ policy we might query whether there is any point in taking a †10,000m debt which, although technically short term, does not in effect ever have to be repaid and having it converted into a debt that is repayable on a fixed schedule ? It only begins to make sense if there is no intention of ever repaying the funded debt.
page 64 note 1. Overall Approach to the Coming Multilateral Negotiations in GA.TT, Document 1/135 e/73 (COMMER 42), Commission of the European Community, Brussels, ch. III, para. 6.
page 65 note 1. Corbet, ‘Division of the World in Economic Spheres of Influence’,loc. cit. p. 231.
page 65 note 2. The point was developed in Cairncross et al., op. cit. p. 22.
page 67 note 1. In this connection, see Corbet, ‘Australian Commercial Diplomacy in a New Era of Negotiation’, Australian Outlook, Melbourne, Apr. 1972.
page 67 note 2. Discussed in Corbet, ‘Division of the World into Economic Spheres of Influence’, po. cit. pp. 222–39.
page 67 note 3. See Johnson, D. Gale, World Agriculture in Disarray (London: Macmillan, for the Trade Policy Research Centre, 1973)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
page 67 note 4. The issue is closely analysed in Tumlir, Jan, ‘Emergency Protection against Sharp Increases in Imports’, in , Corbet and Jackson, Robert (eds.), In Search of a New World Economic Order (London: Croom Helm, for the Trade Policy Research Centre, 1974)Google Scholar.
page 67 note 5. On this neglected topic, the reader might be referred to the lecture by Rodney de C. Grey, ‘Surveillance and Dispute Settlement: Issues in the Multilateral Trade Negotiations’, to the Trade Policy Research Centre, London, 1 Dec. 1976.
page 68 note 1. In two joint declarations, the United States and Japan, in one, and the United States and the European Community, in the other, sought to get new negotiations under way on a tripartite basis. The declarations were lodged with the GATT Secretariat in Geneva on 9 and 10 Feb. 1972.
page 68 note 2. For a review of the major issues, see Corbet and Jackson (eds.), op. cit.
page 68 note 3. Reproduced in GATT Activities in 1973 (Geneva: GATT Secretariat, 1974)Google Scholar.
page 68 note 4. Johnson, H. G., ‘Higher Oil Prices and the International Monetary System’, in Rybczynski, T. M. (ed.), The Economics of the Oil Crisis (London: Macmillan, for the Trade Policy Research Centre, 1976), p. 15Google Scholar
page 68 note 5. The negotiating authority of the United States was granted in the Trade Act of 1974, Public Law 93–618, 93rd Congress, H.R. 10710, signed by President Ford on 3 Jan. 1975.
page 68 note 6. This last negotiating group on “the international framework for the conduct of world trade” was established by the Trade Negotiations Committee of the GATT on 6 Nov. 1976. For a succinct analysis of its implications, see the Neuer Zürcher Zeitung (Zurich), 12 Nov. 1976Google Scholar.