In spite of all protestations and exhortations it is a fact that trade liberalization, the modern version of free trade, is caught in a crisis. Professor Detlef Lorenz is here analysing the causes of this crisis and suggesting alternatives for a future liberalization policy.

It is often maintained, with reference to the increasing competition from newly industrialising countries, that Western support for the development of LDCs' economies would only amount to supplying the rope with which one will later be hanged. Our author argues that, contrary to that opinion,...

Early this year the US Administration made reference to "a marked improvement in the relations between the EC and the USA over the period of the last three years" - an astonishing statement in the light of the mounting non-tariff obstacles to trade between the EC and the USA.

Weighty objections have been raised against stabilization of commodity markets through agreements. The drawbacks of commodity agreements can, however, be largely overcome if the rigid theoretical notion of a price fixed strictly for a long period is abandoned.

UNCTAD's Integrated Programme for Commodities (IPC) would come much closer to being realised, if the industrial and the developing countries could agree on creating the Common Fund. But the Fund remains in dispute. While the LCDs only want to discuss the details of its organisation, the...