The 1958 Haberler Report moved GATT toward expanding developing-country trade

Evidence

In 1957 Haberler was appointed to head a panel of experts commissioned by GATT to assess the terms of trade for primary commodities. The report produced by this commission, published in 1958 under the title Trends in International Trade but universally referred to as the Haberler Report, has been called a “turning point in GATT history” because it called for a range of measures aimed at expanding international trade and the role of developing countries within it (Evans 1968). Among its findings, the Commission confirmed that the prices of primary products had declined 5 percent since 1955, while the prices of industrial goods rose 6 percent over the same period. The Haberler Report also expressed concern about the implications of commodity price fluctuations for developing countries and voiced support for a buffer-stock scheme to help stabilize the earnings of raw material exporters. — Philip Mirowski & Dieter Plehwe (eds.), The Road from Mont Pèlerin, 1758

Categorization

• SHARE: Good specific tidbit for someone following trade history: the Haberler Report is only weakly connected to the Prebisch-Singer thesis despite its reputation.
• XREF: connects to: Haberler framed GATT as a watchdog protecting non-European outsiders — Quinn Slobodian, Globalists: The End of Empire and the…, 667; Haberler’s 1959 critique of Prebisch-Singer did not contradict the GATT report bearing his name — Philip Mirowski & Dieter Plehwe (eds.), The Road from Mont Pèlerin: The Making…, 1760