3
Apart perhaps from steel, which is a baleful exception, world
trade in minerals and metals is also free from quantitative import
restrictions and other protectionist devices. Such a competitive
environment has fostered product innovation and the introduction of new
techniques aimed at increasing productivity and reducing costs. In
other words, this competitive environment has evinced a response from
those many individualists traditionally to be found in the mining and
metallurgical industries.
World Trade in Manufactures
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I think it would be fair to say that manufacturers and traders
in Hong Kong count many individualists among their numbers and very
robust individualists they are too and the Hong Kong Goverment's fiscal
and other policies are committed to the concept of reward for enterprise
and effort.
Unfortunately, however, international trade in manufactures is
not now conducted within a relatively free trade environment similar to
that enjoyed by minerals and metals. It is true that the thirty or so
years following the Second World War saw the largest increase in world
output and trade in any comparable period in history. Part of the
credit for this must go to the gradual lowering of barriers to trade
and payments over this period. Indeed, it is no coincidence that the
most significant exercise in trade liberalisation in this period, the
GATT Kennedy Round in 1967, was followed by a marked acceleration in
the growth of world output and trade over the next five years.
The New
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