World Surge

In spite of all the tariffs, quotas, embargoes and regulatory roadblocks that man's ingeniously protective nationalism could strew in its path, world trade rose to record heights last year. When final figures are in, experts expect that the grand total of world trade in 1956 may have topped $100 billion.

World industrial production, according to the U.N., increased at a slower rate than the year before, but the output was 5% greater than in 1955. The outlook, at least among the free nations of Western Europe, is that the mighty surge started by U.S. Marshall Plan aid after World War II may level off this year.

Some country-by-country samplings:

Britain has stopped the post-Suez run on the pound, and in December actually built up gold and sterling reserves by $168 million. Exports to the U.S. hit an alltime peak in November, and last week Canada placed Britain's single largest dollar order since World War II, a $67.1 million contract for 20 Vickers Vanguard turboprop airliners for Trans-Canada Airlines (see HEMISPHERE). But the London Economist, pronouncing 1956 "the year the economy stood still," warned that in 1957 the British economy will have to grow as never before if Britons are to beat their way out of their present sea of troubles.

West Germany, though still only half a country, is now in third place among trading nations, after the U.S. and Britain. Though harboring 1,083,000 orphans and sheltering 300,000 refugees the Federal Republic last year produced 540,000 dwellings, 1,100,000 cars, more than 1,000,000 tons of shipping, 23.5 million tons of steel (only the U.S. and U.S.S.R. made more), and collected Europe's greatest hoard of other countries' currencies ($4.1 billion). In recent months the country's terrific rise in the rate of productivity has fallen off, as West German workers have begun taking a few hours off on Saturdays to try out the motorbikes and Volkswagens that most of them now own. Industrialists have cast a hard eye at the uncertainties of Eastern Europe and the Middle East, and started cutting back on some of their planned expansion. "The watchword in the money marts was liquidity," reported the New York Times's annual trade review last week.

France, after four years of steady economic expansion, must now pony up all at once for the Suez adventure, the Algerian war and a new $400 million Socialist old-age pension scheme. Result: inflation is back with bells on, and the foreign-trade deficit will top $1 billion. Small blessings item: post-Suez hoarders have cleaned out all the surplus beet sugar the government had despaired of unloading. France's reserves have dropped $500 million in one year.

Soviet Russia harvested its largest grain crop in history, and claimed a 47% increase in grain deliveries, largely because of a good harvest in the 80 million acres plowed and planted in the "new lands" of Kazakhstan and western Siberia. The Communists also claimed substantial industrial gains, but business could not have been all it was cracked up to be: the top planner got fired (TIME, Jan. 7), and the satellites are in bad economic shape (see BUSINESS).

Sweden, with an economy dependent on oil for half of all fuel needs (compared with 13% for Britain, and only 9% for Germany), has been harder hit by the Suez shutdown than any other European country. Raw material imports already cost 5% more; the government's budgeted $100 million surplus has turned into a deficit.

Switzerland imported more, exported more, earned more than ever before. It has 1,072 persons listed as unemployed, and 5,515 jobs unfilled.

Syria lost a fifth of its revenues ($20 million a year) by its pro-Nasser gesture of blowing up the pipelines carrying Iraqi oil across the country to the Mediterranean.

Iraq, by the same act of sabotage, has lost 13 times as much revenue--$700,000 a day in oil royalties.

India, driving madly to fulfill its ambitious second five-year-plan goals, borrowed $360 million from the U.S. and from Russia, withdrew $302 million from its sterling balance in Britain, is printing $2.5 billion in paper rupees to help close the plan's "uncovered gap." Prices rose 25% in the year.

Japan, in a recovery rivaling West Germany's, regained half its prewar trade, led all the world in shipbuilding for export (though Britain's backlog of orders is bigger), and placed third in cotton textiles. But Japan is still plagued by population growth. Ninety million people are congested in an area the size of California, and only 15% of it arable.

Communist China, which claims 600 million subjects, continued to increase in population at the rate of 23 per minute.

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