ABSTRACT
This chapter assesses the foreign trade reform-where the Soviets stand at the beginning of 1989 and where they want to go. It aims to evaluate the consequences from the Western point of view. The structure of Soviet imports had to be rationalized as well, which included raising the question of whether it was more desirable to cut imports of consumer goods or to expand them for social and political reasons. Since 1986, the overall pattern of Western trade with the Soviet Union has remained unfavorable for the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, although individual factors have fluctuated. Soviet dependency on oil sales would be reduced through a growth of non-raw materials exports; the import structure would be modernized as the proportion of elaborate manufactured goods increase, while the proportion of intermediate and primary goods decrease. In the Soviet Union, the coefficients were indeed differentiated from the outset, not only in the quantity of coefficients but also in their proportions.
