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ave developed and are still developing with other countries trade and investment arrangements which accord with the requirements of their basic geographical and economic circumstances. The United Kingdom's share of the trade of the Commonwealth has declined sharply over the last decade. In absolute terms United Kingdom exports to the Commonwealth have grown only slowly, whilst our exports to the EEC have expanded much more rapidly, and in 1970 exceeded our exports to the whole of the Commonwealth. For many Commonwealth countries, too, the European Communities increasingly appear as a more attractive trading partner than the United Kingdom. It is significant that the East African Commonwealth countries have now given the Community trade preferences over us.
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38. But this in no way implies that in joining the Communities we should become increasingly "inward-looking and trade and invest only with the member countries. It is the declared objective of the Six that the formation and enlargement of the Community should lead to increasing overseas trade and investment, and their experience bears this out. When the changes agreed in the Kennedy Round of international tariff negotiations are fully implemented the average level of the external tariff of the EEC on industrial goods will be about 8 per cent, and that of the United Kingdom about 10 per cent. The Community already accounts for 30 per cent of world trade, and its members' trade with the outside world has increased more than 2 times in the twelve years since its formation-as fast as the increase in world trade as a whole. In agricultural trade the Community remains a very large market for third countries' foodstuffs: they import three times as much as we do. The Six are large investors in other countries, both developed and developing, and the enlargement of the Community should enable all their members to achieve a rapid increase in trade and investment overseas as well as in Europe.
39. Similarly the aid given to the poorer nations by our European neighbours is proportionately greater than ours, and the Community has been the first of the major aid donors to introduce a generalised preference scheme which will provide for duty-free access for a wide range of goods from the developing countries. To provide new markets and aid for the less prosperous countries on a scale anything like adequate to their needs, Europe must be united, strong and wealthy. We in the United Kingdom think particularly of the countries of the Commonwealth, who have much to gain from close association with a wider European Community of nations, just as other European countries think of the lands with which they have particular ties of history and of culture, and which are already associated with the Community. The divisions of Europe in the present and past centuries played an undoubted part in building up the tensions and troubles of the developing world: Europe unified in a stronger Community can play a constructive and sympathetic part in relieving them.
THE ECONOMIC CASE
40. The central question here is how membership of the Community would affect the structure of our economy and so the prosperity of our people. For many years we have faced familiar problems: difficulties with the balance of payments, a disappointing record in industrial investment,
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