EEC Trade Policies towards Asian Developing Countries

Abstract

In recent years, there has been growing international concern about protectionist tendencies in industrial countries against exports from the developing world. Estimates show that during the early 1980s, protectionist measures covered an increasing extent of the exports of developing countries. The evidence indicates that compared with Japan and the United States, the European Economic Community (EEC) has the highest relative level of manufactured imports facing non-tariff barriers and also the greatest increase of such trade restrictions. This may seem to suggest that the high rates of unemployment and the keen competitiveness of imports in recent years prompted the EEC countries to respond to the demands for protection from domestic labor organizations and producers. Such a view, however, would be misleading. Rather, protectionism in the EEC must be considered as a part of the process towards the formation of a customs union…