The Evolution of the International Trade Policy

Abstract

In the first chapter of the report of the Secretary-General of the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development entitled Towards a New Trade Policy (Czech translation by the UN Information Center in Prague, 1964) there are these words: different conditions than those under which the first conference in Havana met sixteen years ago.

The first conference was clearly influenced by the experiences of the events that preceded the Great Depression in the thirties, the experiences of the system created in the nineteenth century. At that time, a significant development of world trade, accompanied by strongly developed multilateralism, acted as a powerful catalyst for spontaneous development in peripheral countries (i.e. in developing countries), which supplied industrial centers with raw materials and food.