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This article does not cite any references or sources. (February 2008) Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources. Unverifiable material may be challenged and removed. |
The General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (typically abbreviated GATT) was the outcome of the failure of negotiating governments to create the International Trade Organization (ITO). The Bretton Woods Conference had introduced the idea for an organization to regulate trade as part of a larger plan for economic recovery after World War II. As governments negotiated the ITO, 15 negotiating states began parallel negotiations for the GATT as a way to attain early tariff reductions. Once the ITO failed in 1950, only the GATT agreement was left. The GATT\'s main objective was the reduction of barriers to international trade. This was achieved through the reduction of tariff barriers, quantitative restrictions and subsidies on trade through a series of agreements. The GATT was a treaty, not an organization. The functions of the GATT were taken over by the World Trade Organization which was established during the final round of negotiations in early 1990s.
The history of the GATT can be divided into three phases: the first, from 1947 until the Torquay Round, largely concerned which commodities would be covered by the agreement and freezing existing tariff levels. A second phase, encompassing three rounds, from 1959 to 1979, focused on reducing tariffs. The third phase, consisting only of the Uruguay Round from 1986 to 1994, extended the agreement fully to new areas such as intellectual property, services, capital, and agriculture. Out of this round the WTO was born.
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The precursor organization to the GATT, called the International Trade Organization (ITO) was first proposed in 1947 during the United Nations Conference on Trade and Employment. The negotiating countries of the ITO began parallel negotiations for the GATT as a way to introduce early tariff cuts. Once the ITO failed to be implemented by the United States, the GATT was the only organization left. On January 1, 1948 the agreement was signed by 23 countries: Australia, Belgium, Brazil, Burma, Canada, Ceylon, Chile, China, Cuba, the Czechoslovak Republic, France, India, Lebanon, Luxembourg, Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Pakistan, Southern Rhodesia, Syria, South Africa, the United Kingdom, and the United States. 45,000 tariff concessions were made affecting over $10 billion in trade which comprised 20% of the total global market at the time.
The GATT, as an international agreement, is a treaty. Under United States law it is classified as a congressional-executive agreement. Based on the Reciprocal Trade Agreements Act it allowed the executive branch negotiating power over trade agreements with temporary authority from Congress. At the time it functioned as a provisional, but promising trade system. The agreement 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. In the US, there was large opposition against the International Trade Organization (which had been ratified in several countries, including Australia), and thus President Truman never even submitted it to the Congress.
The second round took place in 1949 in Annecy, France. The main focus of the talks was more tariff reductions, around 5000 total.
The third round occurred in Torquay, England in 1951. 8,700 tariff concessions were made totaling the remaining amount of tariffs to three-fourths of the tariffs which were in effect in 1948.
The fourth round returned to Geneva in 1955 and lasted until May 1956. $2.5 billion in tariffs were eliminated or reduced.
The fifth round occurred once more in Geneva and lasted from 1960 to 1962. The talks were named after U.S. Treasury Secretary and former Under Secretary of State, Douglas Dillon, who first proposed the talks. Along with reducing over $4.9 billion in tariffs, it also yielded discussion relating to the creation of the European Economic Community (EEC).
The sixth round was the last to take place in Geneva from 1964 until 1967 and was named after the late US President Kennedy in his memory. Concessions were made on $40 billion worth of tariffs. Some of the GATT negotiation rules were also more clearly defined.
Reduced tariffs and established new regulations aimed at controlling the proliferation of non-tariff barriers and voluntary export restrictions. Concessions were made on $190 billion worth.
The Uruguay Round began in 1986. It was the most ambitious round to date, hoping to expand the competence of the GATT to important new areas such as services, capital, intellectual property, textiles, and agriculture.
Agriculture was essentially exempted from previous agreements as it was given special status in the areas of import quotas and export subsidies, with only mild caveats. However, by the time of the Uruguay round, many countries considered the exception of agriculture to be sufficiently glaring that they refused to sign a new deal without some movement on agricultural products. These fourteen countries came to be known as the "Cairns Group", and included mostly small and medium sized agricultural exporters such as Australia, Brazil, Canada, Indonesia, and New Zealand.
The Agreement on Agriculture of the Uruguay Round continues to be the most substantial trade liberalization agreement in agricultural products in the history of trade negotiations. The goals of the agreement were to improve market access for agricultural products, reduce domestic support of agriculture in the form of price-distorting subsidies and quotas, eliminate over time export subsidies on agricultural products and to harmonize to the extent possible sanitary and phystosanitary measures between member countries.
In 1993 the GATT was updated (GATT 1994) to include new obligations upon its signatories. One of the most significant changes was the creation of the World Trade Organization (WTO). The 75 existing GATT members and the European Communities became the founding members of the WTO on January 1, 1995. The other 52 GATT members rejoined the WTO in the following two years (the last being Congo in 1997). Since the founding of the WTO, 21 new non-GATT members have joined and 29 are currently negotiating membership. As of October 2007, there were a total of 151 member countries in the WTO.
Of the original GATT members, only the SFR Yugoslavia has not rejoined the WTO. Since FR Yugoslavia, (renamed to Serbia and Montenegro and with membership negotiations later split in two), is not recognised as a direct SFRY successor state; therefore, its application is considered a new (non-GATT) one. The contracting parties who founded the WTO ended official agreement of the "GATT 1947" terms on December 31, 1995.
Whereas GATT was a set of rules agreed upon by nations, the WTO is an institutional body. The WTO expanded its scope from traded goods to trade within the service sector and intellectual property rights. Although it was designed to serve multilateral agreements, during several rounds of GATT negotiations (particularly the Tokyo Round) plurilateral agreements created selective trading and caused fragmentation among members. WTO arrangements are generally a multilateral agreement settlement mechanism of GATT.What is the WTO? (Official WTO site) The debatable issue is recognition of human rights under GATT.
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