UN General Assembly
1977

88. It is even more ridiculous that high-technology societies with highly trained labour forces should, in addition to producing jet aircraft, rocket engines, computers and other complex industrial marvels, also fight the poorer countries tooth and nail in order to produce unnecessarily expensive plastic buckets, T-shirts, shoes, undergarments, and pyjamas on the basis of protected markets. As stated by the Ministers of Foreign Affairs of the Group of 77 in their declaration issued at their meeting in New York on 29 September 1977: "The renewed trend towards protectionism in the developed countries is a cause of deep concern because of its negative impact on the export earnings of developing countries and on their terms of trade, employment policies and development efforts." One passionately hopes that in the not-too-distant future, and well before the probable great crash, there will be an explosion of technological innovation in the developed world that will reverse trade policies whose effects would be to wipe out in the countries of the third world the pitiful advance in industrialization they have made during the last 30 years.