ABSTRACT
The list of gainers comprises quite a number of countries whose individual export success roughly depends on their resource endowment. For instance, neither the European Community (EC) and the US nor Japan could keep their shares in food products and crude materials. Japan which had occupied a dominating trade position in Association of Southeast Asian Nations countries already in 1970 was unable to defend this position in resource-intensive manufactures and chemicals. The "natural trade resistance" factor in world trade determined by transport costs has become increasingly weaker in the course of technical innovations in transportation techniques, particularly for advanced manufactured goods. The German export industry has performed better on all three reference markets than competitors from other EC countries. The sectoral pattern of gains and losses is again very similar on all three markets indicating an erosion of the international competitiveness of the German industry, too. This follows from an analysis of similarities of changes in trade shares presented elsewere.
