44/YOUR MONEY OR YOUR LIFE!
Another source, the 1992 GATT report, provides figures that differ
from those in Table 3.4. The report says that industrialised countries
held a 7 2.4 per cent share of the global trade in commodities in 19 9 0
(see Table 3.3) as compared with the 22.9 per cent share of
developing countries. Eastern Europe had a 4.7 per cent share.
Trade between industrialised countries accounted for 55 per cent
of total global trade in commodities.
Trade between industrialised countries accounted for 76 per cent
of their total share in world trade.
In other words, not only do industrialised capitalist countries
dominate world trade (72.4 per cent); trade between them (76 per
cent of their total trade bill) is considerably greater than trade with
the rest of the world.
Furthermore, trade between developing countries accounts for
only 32.5 per cent of their total foreign trade (including between one
another). This shows how far developing countries' trade is
dominated by trade with the industrialised world (67.5 per cent).
Developing countries are thus at polar opposites from their industri
alised capitalist counterparts.
South-South trade (32.5 per cent) is much less important for the
South than North-North trade (76 per cent) is for the North.
The Scramble for MNC Investment
Third World and former Soviet Bloc countries abandoned policies
aimed at relatively autonomous development. This was the result, on
the one hand, of the external debt crisis and the exhaustion of their
development model; and on the other, of the increase in the power of
MNCs and prominence of policies dictated by the IMF, World Bank
and GATT (now World Trade Organisation - WTO). As a
consequence, these countries were driven to fight for a share of direct
investment from multinational corporations (MNCs).
They also went to war with one another - prodded along by the
IMF, World Bank and WTO - through policies aimed at 'export-
oriented development'. These policies have led to a generalised
collapse in the prices of products exported from the Third World (see
Chapters 7 and 8).
The United Nations Conference on Trade and Development
(UNCTAD) was created in 1964, at a time when a large number of
former colonies had just gained their independence and were