248

INTERNATIONAL TRADE

important for the purpose in hand is the circumstance that we have
price figures of a kind not usually obtainable. The British Board
of Trade publishes price figures separately for imported and
exported articles, or rather, indices showing the movement of the
prices of the two classes. The lack of separate price figures of this
kind is one of the greatest obstacles to any procedure for testing
the validity of the more complex parts of the theory of international
 trade. In the present case, as in that of Canada, just
considered, we are fortunate in having the needed data.
Let the reader recall what has been said elsewhere! about the
net barter terms of trade and the gross barter terms of trade.
The net barter terms are those of the exchange of domestic goods
for foreign goods in the very simplest manner, where nothing
enters into the trade between countries except sales and purchases
of merchandise. Then the net barter terms are the only terms
that arise, and this is the only sense in which we can speak of the
terms of trade. For the moment I ignore services; they will be
considered presently. It is the goods transactions, thus considered
 as the sole items, which the Ricardian theory in its earlier
formulation alone took into consideration. But as the non-merchandise
 transactions enter, there is occasion to distinguish. The
actual international trade of any modern country may be separated
 into two parts: first, the exchange of exported goods for an
equal money value of imported goods; second, an excess in money
value of the imported goods over the exported goods, or vice versa
(as the case may be), representing the balance of the non-merchandise
 transactions. The distinction, be it observed, is one of
analysis only. What in fact takes place is that one unsegregated
mass (or flow) of physical goods moves toward the country as imports,
 another mass moves out as exports. For a country having
net payments due fo it on the “invisible” account, the money
value of the imports is greater than that of the exports; for a
country in the reverse situation the money value of the exports is
greater. The physical volume of the incoming goods (imports), as
compared to the physical volume of the outgoing goods (exports),
1 Chapter 11, pp. 113, 117.