Life – a user's manual Part II - Boksidan

The most important import goods to sweden and Finland 1740
20000
18000
16000
14000
12000
10000
8000
6000
4000
2000
0
Butter
Cheese
Salted herring
Wheat
Rye
Grain
Oats
Malt
Pies
Coffee
Sugar
Tobacco
Pepper
Raisins
Prune
Wine
Sprits
Silk
Wool
Linnen
Cotton
Oliv oil
Karmin
Indigo
Stone coal
Salt
Lead
Chart 7. The Swedish imports in 1740 according to Statistics Sweden (Historical Statistics of Sweden, Part 3
Foreign Trade 1732-1970, SCB, 1972, Stockholm, Sweden), with all contemporary different measures
translated into tons, with the simplification that a liter = 1 kg (which is not completely true for all items).
Some of what was imported was later exported again to other countries.
1863 all tariffs on goods exported from Sweden was removed. And in 1965 the system where certain cities
had to keep customs houses (= buildings where all imported goods were unpacked, counted and taxed) was
abolished and the state took over the full responsibility for customs operations.
1974 the modern system was introduced whereby goods imported to Sweden no longer needed to be
unpacked and examined by a customs officer who worked out the charge that the importer must pay to get
their goods into Sweden. Instead, the importer himself could to go through the goods and send a customs
declaration to the Customs.
Through the WTO (= World Trade Organization, formerly known as ITO = International Trade
Organization, founded in 1948) we have agreed on global custom tariffs (GATT = General Agreement on
Tariffs and Trade), which led to sharp reductions in the custom tariffs.
Sweden has also gradually abolished tariffs against neighboring countries and when we joined the EU in
1995 the trade with the other EU members (and some other countries) is duty free. We are also participating
in a uniform tariff system for imports from outside the Union. Nowadays 75% of the duties we charge on
imports from outside the EU now goes to the EU budget. For Sweden, we thus contributed with 450.3
million Euros to the EU (2011). But we also retain 151 million Euros. Thus, we are still get nearly 6 billion
SEK in duties even though we now have duty-free access for imports from many of our major trading
partners, and despite all the international trade agreements.
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