commodity trade

▪ economics

Introduction

      the international trade in primary goods. Such goods are raw or partly refined materials whose value mainly reflects the costs of finding, gathering, or harvesting them; they are traded for processing or incorporation into final goods. Examples include crude oil, cotton, rubber, grains, and metals and other minerals.

      Manufactured products, such as machinery and clothing, on the other hand, comprise products whose value reflects largely the cost of manufacturing processes. Such manufacturing processes contribute relatively little to the value of primary goods, which undergo little processing before they are traded.

      Commodities and commodity markets are terms used as synonyms for primary goods and the markets in such goods.

Primary commodity markets

      Trade in primary goods may take the form of a normal exchange of goods for money as in any everyday transaction (referred to technically as trade in “actuals”), or it may be conducted by means of futures contracts. A futures contract is an agreement to deliver or receive a certain quantity of a commodity at an agreed price at some stated time in the future. Trade in actuals has declined considerably and in many cases (such as the Liverpool markets in cotton and grain) has even come to a halt.

Operation of the market

      The great bulk of commodity trading is in contracts for future delivery. The purpose of trading in futures is either to insure against the risk of price changes (hedging) or to make a profit by speculating on the price trend. If a speculator believes that prices will rise, he buys a futures contract and sells it when he wishes (e.g., at a more distant delivery date). The speculator either gains (if prices have risen) or loses (if they have fallen), the difference being due to the change in price.

      “ hedging” means the offsetting of commitments in the market in actuals by futures contracts. A producer who buys a commodity at spot (current) prices but does not normally resell until three months later can insure himself against a decline in prices by selling futures: if prices fall he loses on his inventories but can purchase at a lower price; if prices rise he gains on his inventories but loses on his futures sales. Since price movements in the actuals market and the futures market are closely related, the loss (or gain) in actual transactions will normally be offset by a comparable gain (or loss) in the futures market.

      The operation of futures markets requires commodities of uniform quality grades in order that transactions may take place without the buyer having to inspect the commodities themselves. This explains why there is no futures market, for example, in tobacco, which varies too much in quality. A steady, unfluctuating supply also is needed; this is referred to technically as “low elasticity of supply,” meaning that the amount of a commodity that producers supply to the market is not much affected by the price at which they are able to sell the commodity. If supply could be adjusted relatively quickly to changes in demand, speculation would become too difficult and risky because exceptionally high or low prices, from which speculators are able to profit, are eliminated as soon as supply is adjusted. Monopolistic (monopoly and competition) control of demand and supply is also unfavourable to the operation of a futures market because price is subject to a large extent to the control of the monopolist and is thus unlikely to fluctuate sufficiently to provide the speculator with an opportunity for making profits. There is, for example, no market in diamonds, because there is only one marketing cooperative. In 1966 the London market in shellac ceased to function after the Indian government applied control of exporters' prices at the source.

      Before World War II London was the centre of international trade in primary goods, but New York City has become at least as important. It is in these two cities that the international prices of many primary products are determined. Although New York often has the bigger market, many producers prefer the London market because of the large fluctuations in local demand in the United States that influence New York market prices. In some cases international commodity agreements have reduced the significance of certain commodity markets.

      There are markets in both New York and London for numerous primary goods, including cotton, copper, cocoa, sugar, rubber, coffee, wool and wooltops, tin, silver, and wheat. Tea, wool, and furs are auctioned in London, but in the case of many other commodities, auctions have been superseded by private sales. In London the metal market is much more a “spot” or delivery market than other futures markets. Many countries have their own markets: Australia for wool, Sri Lanka and India for tea, and Malaysia for rubber and tin.

The terms of trade

      The relation between the price of primary goods and that of manufactures has long intrigued economists. The relationship is known as the “terms of trade” and may be defined as the ratio of the average price of a country's or a group of countries' exports to the average price of its imports. The long-range trend of the terms of trade between primary products and manufactures has been the subject of diametrically opposed conclusions: some theorists hold that the trend is favourable to the less-developed countries, others that it is unfavourable. Faulty statistical material and methods in various countries are responsible for this lack of agreement.

      Any comparison of the terms of trade over a long period of time is very difficult and may be misleading because the structure of trade changes, as does the quality of the groups of goods studied. Many economists believe that the terms of trade were adverse for less-developed countries from 1870 to 1938. They point to the fact that as developed countries become more technologically advanced there is a tendency for them to require relatively less in the way of primary products. A downward influence is thus exercised on primary product prices. Another factor is that in the industrial countries the benefits of progress find expression not in lower prices but in higher wages. This, together with inflationary pressures, means that prices of manufactured goods produced by the developed countries tend to rise steadily. There is thus a tendency, it is argued, for the less-developed countries to receive relatively less for what they have to sell and to have to pay more for what they need to buy. But the statistical problems posed by any attempt to verify this hypothesis are considerable. The countries selected, the relative weight assigned to the various goods, changes in transport costs, and the fact that the quality of manufactured goods has improved much more than that of primary goods make the statistics unreliable. There is also the problem that the terms of trade between primary commodities and manufactures do not necessarily coincide with the terms of trade between less-developed and industrial areas.

      Even if it were established that the terms of trade have moved against the less-developed, largely primary-producing countries, this would not necessarily mean that their balance-of-payments situation has been adversely affected. A decline in the terms of trade may in fact improve a country's balance-of-payments, because, although the prices of that country's exports have fallen, it may, as a consequence of this fall in price, be able to sell a far larger quantity. Total revenue from exports may thus increase. Similarly, although imports may become more expensive, the result may be that the country's demand for imports drops very steeply, so that less is spent on them than when they were cheaper.

      These problems make it extremely difficult to generalize about the effects of commodity price changes on the economic situation of one or a group of countries.

Price movements

      Prices usually vary widely in commodity markets, not only in the short run but also in the long run. In the short run there are frequent changes in supply because of varying climatic conditions (for agricultural products) and because of political and other events on the international scene (such as the closure of the Suez Canal) and in individual countries (such as strikes). As a rule, price changes do not give rise in the short run to substantial changes in the supply of or demand for primary goods (low elasticity of supply and demand). Business cycles in the importing countries, however, have an influence on demand. Market conditions differ, of course, from product to product. In the case of sugar and wheat, demand is fairly stable, but supply is not; as regards tin, and, indeed, the majority of metals (metal), the converse is true. In the case of industrial commodities, such as cotton, there are fluctuations in both supply and demand.

      In the long run the extent of changes in demand and supply is usually greater. A considerable and sustained price increase, for example, may result in a fall in demand and the appearance of substitute products. After a number of years, supply may increase in response to a higher level of demand reflected by higher prices. The length of time required to adjust supply to demand varies from commodity to commodity. Tree crops, for example, need a long growth period, and mineral reserves are tapped only if expectations about the price trend are favourable.

Effect on economic development

      Through their repercussion on export earnings, price fluctuations are often held responsible for the variations in the growth rate of countries producing primary goods, especially since exports of a single primary good account for a large part of the total exports of many countries. But apart from the fact that, as described above, quantities exported influence export earnings as much as prices, there are many other factors that determine export earnings. Such factors include the type and destination of exports and, above all, the economic policies of the countries concerned.

      It is thus difficult to generalize about the relation of foreign trade to economic growth. Many countries with very unstable exports have relatively stable national incomes; others whose exports are stable have highly unstable national incomes. The stimulus from exports will usually be stronger, for example, if the rate of demand for these exports is growing rapidly. Often, however, the transmission of growth to the nonexporting sector of the economy is impeded in less-developed countries by the economic, social, and political organization of the economy. It is important, for example, for some countries to try to decrease exports of goods that have a slowly growing demand and at the same time to try to increase exports of goods, such as minerals, for which world demand is growing more rapidly.

Efforts to stabilize (economic stabilizer) prices

      The uncertainty both for private producers and for governments resulting from sharp and sudden commodity price changes has resulted in many efforts to achieve greater stability on the market in primary goods.

Action in individual countries

      In theory a country could insulate domestic producers against international price fluctuations through variable charges and subsidies, but politically it is difficult to tax away producers' profits during a period of rising prices and to hold the resulting revenue in order to redistribute it should prices and profits fall.

      In Nigeria, Ghana, Sierra Leone, and The Gambia (Gambia, The), for instance, national marketing boards that attempted to even out price fluctuations of cocoa, cotton, and peanuts (groundnuts) were in operation before those countries became independent. In the former French territories in Africa, stabilization funds fixed producer prices and controlled margins and profits. The main dangers inherent in national stabilization schemes are inconsistent government policies and the excessive operating costs of the public bodies concerned. These factors explain the unsatisfactory results of many national price agencies.

International cooperation

      In the 1920s international cartels (cartel) were created for rubber, sugar, tin, and tea, but they yielded no lasting results. Nor did cooperation between the governments of exporting and importing countries (such as in the International Wheat Agreement of 1933 and the International Sugar Agreement (trade agreement) of 1937) serve to attain the desired goals during the Great Depression. Of special significance among more recent attempts to raise and stabilize a commodity price has been the one made by the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC). (The special features of the oil market are considered below.) Other attempts to stabilize commodity prices since World War II have mainly assumed three forms—the multilateral contract agreement, the quota agreement, and the buffer-stock agreement. Transactions are effected at world market prices. When a minimum or a maximum price is reached or approached, efforts are made to ensure that prices remain within the two limits. Each of the three systems achieves this in a different way.

      In the multilateral contract system, consumers and producers undertake to buy or sell a specified quantity of the commodity at agreed minimum and maximum prices, or at a price within the agreed range.

      In the quota method, the quantity negotiated is determined by a previously fixed quota when a minimum or maximum price is exceeded. When there is a surplus, the producers restrict their exports or production; when there is a shortage, quotas are allotted to the consumer countries. With the buffer-stock method, stability is ensured by a combination of an export control arrangement and a buffer-stock arrangement. In certain circumstances exports are restricted by the controlling body. The buffer-stock agency buys when the market price is in the lower sector or at the floor price set out in the agreement; the buffer-stock agency sells when the market price is in the upper sector or at the ceiling price.

Results

      The utility of commodity agreements in general can hardly be judged on past experience. Experience with wheat, sugar, and tin agreements, which cover a comparatively long period, is not conducive to generalization. Some degree of stability, though at a high price level, was achieved in the case of wheat, but this was due to the dominant influence of U.S. and Canadian policies. In the case of tin, too, transactions for the U.S. strategic stockpile exerted an influence. Political factors (including the Cuban revolution) underlay the de facto suspension from 1962 to 1969 of the sugar agreement, which had covered, and still covers, only a limited share of the world market.

      The value of world transactions in tin, wheat, coffee, and sugar amounts to only a small part of the value of the world's entire commodity trade. Furthermore, the agreements in question do not cover all transactions. It is, in a way, understandable that only a few such agreements have been concluded; during a boom the producer countries are not inclined to conclude them, and during a depression there is little incentive for consumer countries to enter into them.

Conditions for success

      A prerequisite for the success of commodity agreements is that they should embrace the vast majority of producers and especially the largest of them. No transactions should be excluded, and substitute commodities should be covered by the agreements.

      The most intractable of the difficulties in concluding commodity agreements lies in the fixing (incomes policy) of the price range. Neither unduly high nor unduly low price scales are tenable. Future market conditions are not easily foreseeable, so the possibility of errors cannot be ruled out; regular adjustment of the price ranges is necessary.

      When it comes to determining the price range, the importing and exporting countries, respectively, do not systematically advocate low and high prices. Certain importing countries are not opposed to a relatively high price because the difference between the international price and the tariff-protected price of domestic producers is thereby reduced; exporting countries in a favourable competitive position are often in favour of lower prices so that they will be able to increase their share of the market at the expense of less-competitive countries.

      In concluding an agreement, the parties have to bear in mind that complete price stabilization is impossible. It would in fact be undesirable, because in the long run supply and demand need to remain in equilibrium, and the necessary adjustments in the economies concerned must not be precluded. Price fluctuations do not necessarily imply failure, because the fluctuations might well have been larger had the agreement not been concluded.

      The method of stabilization needs to be chosen carefully, with due regard for the characteristics of the commodities concerned. The multilateral purchase contract and buffer-stock systems offer the advantage of not requiring any restrictions on production; new producers with improved technical equipment may participate.

      A buffer stock needs to be sufficiently large if it is to achieve its purpose. Wider financing facilities are necessary; this is something to which the importing countries could contribute. Even then the buffer stock is better used together with other methods of stabilization. Because of the perishable nature of certain commodities or their bulk and high storage costs, however, a buffer stock is not always feasible. Buffer stocks alone often are not sufficient for the control of prices, and it is sometimes necessary for producers to restrict exports in order to reduce supply, thus pushing prices up.

Interests of the less-developed countries

      So far as the producer countries are concerned, stabilization of incomes, rather than of prices, is the most important factor. Although commodity agreements may contribute to this, their relatively limited success has caused other proposals to be advanced.

      Compensatory financing refers to international financial assistance to a country whose export earnings have suffered as a result of a decline in primary commodity prices. Such a system was instituted in 1963 by the International Monetary Fund (IMF). In 1969 the IMF also began making loans available to countries having a balance-of-payments need in relation to the financing of buffer stocks under international commodity agreements.

EEC stabilization fund

      The European Economic Community has established a stabilization fund for its associated overseas countries; prices must fall by a specified percentage before the mechanism of the fund goes into effect, and the richer beneficiary countries must repay the aid received.

      Other proposals involve the introduction of simultaneous negotiations for a whole range of commodities. These discussions, however, and more particularly the administration of the resulting multicommodity agreement, would be highly complex. It may also be argued that the significance of export instability has been exaggerated and that most of the economies involved have suffered no serious damage. Thus, the resources devoted to countering price fluctuations and compensatory financing might be better employed in investments or technical assistance.

      As to the possibility of the less-developed countries themselves influencing prices, circumstances vary from commodity to commodity. In the case of primary goods, such as coffee, that are produced only in the less-developed countries and for which practically no substitutes exist, action to increase prices can easily be taken if demand is not too much affected by price increases. A simple way to raise prices would be for the governments of producing countries to levy a duty on exports. Attempts by some developing countries to raise prices, however, can induce other developing countries to increase their output. For example, African coffee production was stimulated when Latin-American countries took steps to raise the price of their coffee.

Limitations on pricing

      The fact that there are substitutes for a few primary goods (such as cotton, wool, and rubber) limits the extent to which primary-goods producers can raise their prices. Also, most commodities produced by less-developed countries face competition from the developed countries, which may produce the same commodities (such as petroleum, sugar, rice, and tobacco) or goods substitutable in varying degrees (such as soybean oil for peanut oil).

      Many agricultural commodities are protected in the developed countries by tariffs, which means that their requirements are often met entirely from domestic production. Some developed countries produce surpluses that are sold abroad at low, subsidized prices. Such commodities are therefore traded to a relatively small extent on world markets. The sales of the less-developed countries are thus influenced by the developed countries' national policies and by the price at which these countries sell their surpluses on the residual markets. The less-developed countries that produce minerals and metals seemingly have the most favourable export prospects because demand for such finite commodities is expanding among the developed countries, many of which are concerned over the depletion of their domestic resources.

M.A. van Meerhaeghe Ed.

OPEC and oil (petroleum)

      Of the multinational organizations aimed at affecting the price of a commodity, one of the most significant is the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) (OPEC). It was founded in 1960 by Middle Eastern countries and Venezuela, although its membership has come to include developing nations in other parts of the world. Some major oil-exporting nations have remained outside the organization, notably Mexico and Russia.

      The principal objective of OPEC has been to raise the price received by the oil-exporting countries. During its early years, it was notably unsuccessful: plentiful supplies of oil kept the price low throughout the 1960s. In the early 1970s, however, major changes took place. The rapid economic expansion, which was simultaneously occurring in many countries, put upward pressure on the demand for oil. At the same time, the production of oil was leveling out and beginning to decline in the United States, with the result that U.S. demand for imported oil was rising rapidly.

      In 1973 OPEC seized (embargo) the opportunities offered by the changing market conditions—and by the political and economic disruptions associated with the war (Arab-Israeli wars) between Israel and its Arab neighbours—to raise prices sharply, from about $3 to more than $12 per barrel. Between 1974 and 1979 the international price of oil remained quite stable, but then OPEC was once again successful in pushing the price up sharply—to more than $30 per barrel in 1980. These price increases caused a huge transfer in revenues from the oil-importing nations to the oil-exporting countries. They also contributed to a major increase in inflation in the importing countries.

      The large increase in revenues in the OPEC nations allowed many of them to embark on major development programs. On the other side, the loss of revenues, combined with the inflationary impact, precipitated major recessions in many of the oil-importing countries in 1974–75 and 1980–82. The higher oil price also has been suggested as a cause of a decline in productivity in many countries after 1973, although the causes of the decline are not well understood.

      OPEC has often been called an international cartel, but it lacked the standard enforcement mechanism of a cartel during the two periods (1973 and 1979–80) when prices rose spectacularly. That is, it did not have a mechanism for sharing the market among the oil-exporting nations. Saudi Arabia played a key role in enforcing the organization's price increases.

      In the 1970s Saudi Arabia had proven reserves in excess of 150 billion barrels, more than twice as much as any other nation, and five or six times the proven reserves of such major non-OPEC producers as the United States and Mexico. Because of its huge reserves and productive capacity, Saudi Arabia was able to act as the residual supplier, cutting back on production when demand slackened, thus reducing downward pressures on prices. Saudi Arabia's willingness to act as the residual supplier was partly the result of its limited population; even when producing at much less than capacity, it had a very large oil income per capita.

      During the early and middle 1980s, the oil market softened markedly. Oil consumption grew much more slowly, partly as a result of the major U.S. recession of 1982 and sluggish growth in western Europe, and partly as a result of increased conservation measures, a reaction to the upward spiral of fuel prices in the 1970s. At the same time, oil output increased in a number of non-OPEC areas such as the North Sea.

      The result was downward pressure on prices through the mid-1980s. In order to maintain sales and revenues, OPEC members had an incentive to undercut the posted price. As its oil production fell sharply and the bills from its ambitious development projects continued to increase, Saudi Arabia became less willing to act as the residual supplier. In order to relieve the downward pressure on prices, OPEC members attempted to transform the organization into a more formal cartel, with production quotas for each member. However, these efforts faced the classic problem of cartels: each member had an incentive to cheat on the organization by producing more than its quota and by offering secret price concessions to buyers.

Paul Wonnacott

Additional Reading

Bela Balassa, Trade Prospects for Developing Countries (1964); L. Baranyai and J.C. Mills, International Commodity Agreements (1963; originally published in Spanish, 1962); C.P. Brown, Primary Commodity Control (1975); Joseph D. Coppock, International Economic Instability: The Experience After World War II (1962), and International Trade Instability (1977); Simon Kuznets, Modern Economic Growth: Rate, Structure, and Spread (1966); M.A.G. Van Meerhaeghe, International Economic Institutions, 4th ed. (1985; originally published in Dutch, 1964); J.W.F. Rowe, Primary Commodities in International Trade (1965); and United Nations Conference on Trade and Development, Proceedings (irregular).Paul Wonnacott

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