| General Agreement On Tariffs And Trade |
Article Index for General |
Website Links For General |
Information AboutGeneral Agreement On Tariffs And Trade |
| CATEGORIES ABOUT GENERAL AGREEMENT ON TARIFFS AND TRADE | |
| treaties | |
| world trade organization | |
| international trade | |
| code of conduct | |
|
The GATT, as an international agreement, is very similar to a Treaty . Under United States Law it is classed as a Congressional-executive Agreement . It is based on the "''unconditional most favored nation principle''." This means that the conditions applied to the most favored trading nation (i.e. the one with the least restrictions) apply to all trading nations. HISTORICAL ROOTS OF GATT AND THE FAILURE OF THE ITO While the United States has always participated in international trade, it did not take a leadership role in global trade policy making until the Great Depression. One reason for this is that under the US Constitution, Congress has responsibility for promoting and regulating commerce, while the executive branch has responsibility for foreign policy. Thus, trade policy was a tug of war between the branches and the two branches did not always agree on the mix of trade promotion and protection. However, in 1934, the United States began an experiment, the Reciprocal Trade Agreements Act of 1934. In the hopes of expanding employment, Congress agreed to permit the executive branch to negotiate bilateral trade agreements. (Bilateral agreements are those between two parties -- for example, the US and another country.) During the 1930s, the amount of bilateral negotiation under this act was fairly limited, and in truth it did not do much to expand global or domestic trade. However, the Second World War led policy makers to experiment on a broader level. In the 1940s, working with the British government, the United States developed two innovations to expand and govern trade among nations. These mechanisms were called the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) and the ITO (International Trade Organization). GATT was simply a temporary multilateral agreement designed to provide a framework of rules and a forum to negotiate trade barrier reductions among nations. It was built on the Reciprocal Trade Agreements Act, which allowed the executive branch to negotiate trade agreements, with temporary authority from the Congress. "ROUNDS" OF GATT TRADE NEGOTIATIONS The countries who signed GATT occasionally negotiated new trade agreements that all would enter into. Each such set of agreements was called a "round". In general, each of these agreements bound the members to reduce certain Tariff s, with many special-case treatments of individual products, and in many cases with exceptions and modifications for each country. # Geneva Round ( 1948 ): 23 countries. GATT enters into force. # Annecy Round ( 1949 ): 13 countries. # Torquay Round ( 1951 ): 38 countries. # Fourth Round - Geneva ( 1956 ): 26 countries. Tariff reductions. Strategy set for future GATT policy toward developing countries, improving their positions as treaty participants. # , then U.S. Undersecretary of State. # agreement (which, in the United States, was rejected by Congress ). # Tokyo Round ( 1979 ): 102 countries. Reduced non-tariff trade barriers. Also reduced tariffs on manufactured goods. Improvement and extension of GATT system. # to replace the GATT treaty. Reduced tariffs and Export Subsidies , reduced other Import Limit s and Quota s over the next 20 years, agreement to enforce Patent s, Trademark s, and Copyright s ( TRIPS ), extending international trade law to the service sector ( GATS ) and open up foreign investment. It also made major changes in the dispute settlement mechanism of GATT. EXTERNAL LINKS
SEE ALSO |
|
|