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# IV. MANUFACTURES IMPORTS FROM DEVELOPING COUNTRIES

23. This import expansion was not confined to industrial country suppliers. Much has been said about a supposed tendency of trade to gravitate to industrial countries, to be internal to manufacturing branches and even to multi-national firms, and to concentrate on high-technology goods: all reasons to be concerned about its bypassing developing countries. The accession of the new Mediterranean EC members, themselves developing (Greece and Portugal) or just recently developed (Spain), and EC preferential trade relations with the seven members of the European Free Trade Association (EFTA) may also have given cause for concern. So might the preferential trade relationship, developing into a free trade area, between the US and Canada, and bilateral pressures by industrial country trading partners on Japan.

24. In reality, manufactures imports from developing countries grew much faster than imports"4 from industrial countries into all three major trading areas. In the EC, their dollar value rose by 207% from 1980 to 1990 while manufactures imports from industrial countries rose by 142%. Even Japan, the most dynamic industrial country source of EC manufactures imports, did only marginally better than developing countries did overall.<sup>15</sup> The phenomenon is widespread across sectors. Among finished manufactures, only in "other transport equipment" (much influenced by aeronautic products) and in power generating machinery did developing countries do somewhat less well than industrial country exporters. While textiles and clothing imports from developing countries rose only marginally faster than from other sources, in sectors like machinery (other than power-generating) and office equipment, their shares rose substantially both relative to intra-EC trade and to other industrial country suppliers. EC imports of "machinery and transport equipment" from developing countries now much exceed those of textiles and clothing. The overall share of developing countries in EC manufactures imports rose from about 19 percent in 1989 to about 24 percent in 1990.

25. Similar findings can be made for the US and Japan. In these markets, the 1980 shares of developing countries were about twice as high as in the EC; in both, they rose faster than imports from other sources. Already in 1980, developing countries collectively supplied more manufactures to the US ($33 billions) than did either Japan ($32 billions) or the EC ($31 billions), while in Japan developing countries ($7 billions) preceded the EC ($6 billions) and followed the US ($9 billions). In 1990, developing countries vastly increased their advance in the US market ($131 billions, against $91 billions from Japan and $71 billions from the EC), and acquired one in Japan ($34 billions against 29.6 from the US and 29.2 from the EC). While there are differences in the relative strengths of developing countries in the three markets, the breadth of their advance is general. Inclusion of "Eastern Europe" would obviously increase the shares of developing countries, and mostly lower the " Except when otherwise indicated 'Developing Countries' include the high-income Middle and Far Easterm economies (other than Japan) **and** China; they exclude **Eastern** Euope.

'5 SOURCE: GATr data files **(see** Annex Tables).