Trade With Socialist Countries
In the late 1980s, the Soviet Union traded with fourteen socialist countries. The political and economic relationships between the Soviet Union and these countries determine the four groups into which these countries can be divided: members of Comecon; Yugoslavia; China; and the developing communist countries of Cambodia, Laos, and the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (North Korea).
Business with socialist countries was conducted on a bilateral, country-by-country basis in which imports balanced exports. Soviet oil exports to these countries bought machinery and equipment and industrial consumer goods, as well as political support without the expenditure of freely convertible foreign currency. In addition, Soviet aid programs, which took the form of direct loans or trade subsidies, almost exclusively involved socialist countries.
Read more about this topic: Foreign Trade Of The Soviet Union
Famous quotes containing the words trade, socialist and/or countries:
“Unless we do more than simply learn the trade of our time, we are but apprentices, and not yet masters of the art of life.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“Democracy is the wholesome and pure air without which a socialist public organization cannot live a full-blooded life.”
—Mikhail Gorbachev (b. 1931)
“[W]e are all guilty in some Measure of the same narrow way of Thinking ... when we fancy the Customs, Dresses, and Manners of other Countries are ridiculous and extravagant, if they do not resemble those of our own.”
—Joseph Addison (1672–1719)