ECONOMIC CRISES, STRUCTURAL CHANGE 123
tries in the imports and exports of the GDR was only about 56 percent,
while that of the “non-socialist economic area” was about 41 percent.^75
The GDR, as well as other Soviet bloc countries, chose to take a direct
path into the global market after it became apparent that the COMECON
would not be able to come to grips with the challenges that went along
with globalization.^76 The FRG remained by far the GDR’s most important
Western trade partner. Around half of East German exports to capitalist
industrialized countries went to the Federal Republic, while West Ger-
many’s share in Eastern imports was somewhat lower.^77 Inter-German
trade continued to be worthwhile for the GDR, especially since it was
conducted in “accounting units,” which meant that convertible curren-
cies were not needed to import goods from the West. Furthermore, GDR
exports to West Germany—as opposed to other non-EEC member coun-
tries—were subject to a lower value-added tax and exempt from import
duties and levies as a result of political considerations related to the “Ger-
man question.”^78
Moreover, the extension of the interest-free credit line to pay for the
trade in goods between the two Germanys (the so-called “swing”) in the
1970s all but begged for the GDR to increase its debt. Yet the growth of
the country’s debt in convertible currencies was ultimately far more dra-
matic. This defi cit stemmed from the fact that the GDR was consuming
more than it could aff ord under Honecker’s “unity of economic and social
policy”; at the same time, the country’s investments were still not enough
to make its manufactured export goods competitive. The GDR’s trade bal-
ance only managed to shift out of the red in the early 1980s thanks to the
economic pressures generated by the refusal of the West to grant loans
to the entire Soviet bloc for a while in the wake of the national insolvency
of Poland and Romania, as well as a sharp rise in international interest
rates. However, this positive trade balance rested almost entirely on im-
port cuts. Likewise, the two “Strauß loans” issued by West Germany in
1983 and 1984 (named after Bavarian prime minister Franz Josef Strauß,
who had arranged them) and amounting to a total of about two billion
D-Mark helped the GDR get out of this acute credit crunch. Yet, these
loans were not signifi cant in terms of the development of inter-German
trade. Shortly thereafter, the GDR was no longer able to defer the im-
ports it needed, which meant that its net debt in convertible currencies
owed to other Western industrialized countries began to grow once again.
Simultaneously, trade with these countries as well as with the FRG de-
clined because the GDR could no longer compensate for sinking revenue
from petroleum export products with other kinds of export goods.^79 The
“Strauß loans” may also be interpreted as evidence of a “solidifying basis
of trust between the two Germanies” that ran contradictory to the general