Unpredictable barriers to trade

Strategies among developing countries for the diversification of their economies and for increases in manufactured exports instead of primary commodities have to be planned and implemented under adverse conditions. Sharp fluctuations in developed countries' activity together with uncertainty resulting from the frequency of the introduction of new, often discriminatory, protectionist measures complicates policy making as regards both the short and the longer term. Unpredictable barriers to trade discriminates mainly against those countries which had successfully embarked upon export-oriented industrial development and those which aimed at an increase in exports of primary commodities or of manufactures which would otherwise have been absorbed domestically.