ABSTRACT
THE decay of East-West trade has raised problems affecting the whole of Europe and causing particular injury to Western Germany. The exchange of goods with the countries east of the Iron Curtain has declined severely for all countries, but the German share has fallen beyond the average, though it must be noted that the Eastward trade of the Russian Zone has correspondingly expanded and that the regions east of the Oder-Neisse Line have fallen entirely within the Russian system. The diminution in Europe's Eastern trade was accompanied by a corresponding increase in the dollar gap and, more recently, by an intensification of competition among the industrial countries of Western Europe for trade in the Western world. The longer trade between East and West continues to be interrupted, the more dangerous will be the effects of the development of two distinct systems fostered by the planned economy within the Russian sphere. The development of ambitious industrial programmes based on the heavy industry complexes in East and South-East Europe is creating duplications within the Russian area analogous to those produced in Western Europe as a consequence of the Marshall Plan and of economic nationalism. This process is accompanied by a diminution in the output of raw materials and agricultural produce, a process which is intensified by the fact that the tension between East and West prohibits an exchange of goods between these two regions which would be calculated to retard this diminution. Investigations made into the structural changes of trade between East and West are available; particularly valuable ones have been produced by the European Economic Commission in Geneva." I t appears that Western Europe's
share in the imports of the Eastern European countries, including Russia, fell from 61 % in 1938 to 15% in 1951; at the same time the share of Western Europe in these countries' exports fell from 72% to 19%. While trade within the Eastern bloc increased, the dollar gap grew on the Western side while overseas exports increased, though at a slower rate. Accordingly the share of Eastern Europe in the imports of Western Europe fell from 8.1% in 1938 to 2.7% in the first half of 1952, while the share in exports fell from 7.3% to 2.3%. Within this general decline that of Western Germany was particularly severe. In 1938 the share of Eastern Europe was approximately 13% of Germany's exports and imports; in the first half year of 1952 it had fallen to 1.3% of exports and 1.2'3, of imports. Germany belongs to the group of countries whose Eastern trade has suffered particularly heavily, while Switzerland, Austria, Italy and Great Britain were more successful in maintaining themselves, to say nothing of countries like Sweden, Denmark and Finland, in whose foreign trade the East actually now plays an increasing part.
