ABSTRACT
This chapter deals with a grey area: the promotion of exports by 'unfair' means in a manner which makes it very difficult for eneral Agreement on Tariffs and Trade, customers and competitors to gauge the extent of the implicit subsidisation. The obverse is the case when governments set up import-export corporations that, in their balance sheets, compound export subsidies with gains from special imports. Rarely was a British nationalised corporation subjected to such exceptionally blunt criticism for usually the bodies are able to indulge themselves with impunity and without unwelcome publicity. The nationalised corporation is producing more coal that it can sell at home and parliament is voting funds to buttress a level of output which obviates the closing of uneconomic pits. The extraordinary profits, resulting from selling in a starved home market, are utilised in a roundabout fashion to finance export subsidies.
