One special case is the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC), established in 1960. So far, it has unchallengedly violates the provisions of the Havana Charter that impose consumer representation. It uses a collective bargaining process – not with importing countries, but with production and marketing companies, most of which are controlled by citizens of advanced industrialized countries, particularly in the United States, the United Kingdom, the Netherlands and France. Perhaps ripe for a true international oil company. An internal distribution system in the United States, on behalf of domestic producer groups, has already led to a system of import controls and it is argued forcefully that import quotas should be imposed by multilateral rather than unilateral instrumentality. Germany, Italy and Japan, for example, have very little direct control over oil supply, but are important consumers and importers. The fact that oil-exporting countries have relatively prosperous members of the less developed world, while the poorest countries rely heavily on oil imports, also argues for a reluctance to exercise OPEC`s bargaining power. There is a great gap between the principles underlying these provisions and the harsh realities of the agreements that were actually negotiated in the post-war period. The U.S.S.R.

continues to vote on the international sugar agreement and the international wheat agreement as an exporting country, although the dynamism of international trade is such that it has recently become a major net importer of both countries. In the present circumstances, the United States, although not itself a member of the ITA, is in fact setting a ceiling for international tin prices by regulating the rate at which tin disposals are produced from that country`s strategic stocks. In the case of wheat, too, the international market was less dominated by IWA than by the oligopolistic pricing practices of the Canadian Wheat Board and the U.S. Commodity Credit Corporation. The membership of a large number of nations in the current international agreements on raw materials can only complicate administrative and decision-making processes, whereas in at least one case – the UK`s decision not to side with the 1953 IWA – the absence of a major wheat-importing country could have had a beneficial effect in moderating the exercise of oligopolistic power.