Business men worried about the fall of world trade

“At a time when this country has to contend with conditions flowing from the credit squeeze and difficulties in the motor vehicle industry, it is not too pleasant to read that there is likely to be a reduction in the rate of growth of world trade this year. The United Nations’ World Economic Survey for 1955 suggests that this decline will follow the reduced rate of expansion in demand and output in the industrial countries. This will affect countries dependent on exports for expansion of economic activity. The report finds that the economic record of the past few years is better than that of the ten years following World War I. There are several grounds for serious concern, however. The growth hitherto has been due only in part to favourable long-term forces. It had been largely based on temporary or special factors, and some of these have been disappearing. It is properly suggested that one decade of prosperity affords no proof that the world has acquired permanent immunity against the business cycle, or that the national or international remedies in its medicine chests would prove sufficiently potent to cope with another outcropping of the disease. Having regard to the changing aspect of world markets, to the increasing tempo and strength of foreign competition and to the domestic difficulties in this country, there is. indeed, no assurance that the comparatively good time through which we have passed in recent years will be prolonged” –(Birmingham Chamber of Commerce Journal, August, 1956.)