Abstract
The Uruguay Round negotiation was the eighth postwar multilateral trade negotiation conducted under the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (“GATT”). As with other GATT negotiations, its purpose was to liberalize trade. One might have expected the Uruguay Round, as with other GATT negotiations, to continue the steady movement toward a more open and predictable international trade regime. It did not do this. Instead, the Uruguay Round produced a profound alteration of the trade regime in response to an equally profound transformation of international economic relations. It amounted to system change in the world economy.
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References
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Gatt, International Trade 1985–86 (1986) at 26. See alsoGilbert R. Winham, International Trade and the Tokyo Round Negotiation (1986).
By March 31, 1994, only 29 developing and transitional countries had signed one or more of the Tokyo Round Agreements, GATT, GUIDE TO GATT LAW AND PRACTICE 1056–59 (1994).
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Winham, supraGilbert R. Winham, International Trade and the Tokyo Round Negotiation (1986) note 2, Chapter 2, “Background: Creating the Capacity to Negotiate.”
The reader is encouraged to consult two excellent histories and two excellent memoirs: John Croome, Reshaping Theworld Trading System: a History of the Uruguay Round (1995); Preeg, supra note 1; Alan Oxley, the Challenge of Free Trade (1990); and Hugo Paemen and Alexandra Bensch, From the GATT to the WTO: the European Community in the Uruguay Round (1995).
Odell has examined market conditions as an explanation for international economic negotiations, which is analogous to the argument presented here. See John Odell, Understanding International Trade Policies: An Emerging Synthesis, 43 World Politics 139 (October 1990).
Senior Officials Group, Record of Discussions: Note by the Secretariat (GATT Doc., SR.SOG/2 of November 22, 1985) at 17. This observation was supported by the Chief Negotiator of the European Union: “Its [the Uruguay Round] aim was quite simply to carry out a complete overhaul of the multilateral trading system, whilst at the same time broadening and deepening its scope.” Paemen and Bensch, supra note 7, at 89.
A former Australian Head of Delegation to the Uruguay Round has observed: “When the United States started advocating a new trade round, its first supporters were Japan, the smaller industrialized countries and some of the Latin Americans, mainly the agricultural exporters. The European Community was ambivalent.” Oxley, supra Alan Oxley, The Challenge of Free Trade (1990) note 7, at 97.
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GATT, International Trade 1988–89 Vol. I (1989), Tables 22, 31. Western Europe had 58 per cent of services trade (exports plus imports), followed by Asia with 18 per cent and North America with 14 per cent.
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Examples include central and local government securities, corporate debt, equities, commercial paper, bank certificates of deposit, asset-backed securities, and exchange-traded and over-the-counter derivatives. See Morris Goldstein et al., supra DAVID FOLKERTS-LANDAU, PETER GARBER, LILIANA ROJAS-SUAREZ, and MICHAEL SPENCER, International Capital Markets: Part I. Exchange Rate Management and International Capital Flows 24 (1993) note 57, at 2.
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Rutter defined stocks as “the cumulative historical book value of direct investors’ equity (including reinvested earnings) in, and net outstanding loans to, their foreign affiliates.” Flows are “annual direct investment capital flows (equity, reinvested earnings and intercompany debt)....” John Rutter, Recent Trends in International Direct Investment (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Department of Commerce, Investment Analysis Division, August, 1992), at 1.
Id., at 8. In 1989, the U.S. share of world outward stocks of IDI was 27.9 per cent, and its share of inward stocks was 26.85. per cent.
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For example, Ostry defines it as follows: “The ever tightening and more complex linkages among nationstates, first by trade, then by financial flows, and more recently by a surge of foreign direct investment have greatly enhanced the power and ubiquitousness of the multilateral enterprise in the international arena. This deepening integration of the world economy, fed or even led by the continuing revolution in information and communication technology has reinforced the shift to trade policy inside the border and the latent push to system harmonization.” Ostry, supra Sylvia Ostry, The Post-Cold War Trading System: Who’S on First? (1997), esp. Chapter 5, “The East Asian Challenge” note 13, at xvi–xvii.
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Id. at 37, 39 and accompanying tables.
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The OECD report notes: “[Globalization] reinforces the general policy prescriptions of trade liberalisation and non-discriminatory trade and investment regimes.... it also underscores the costly and ineffective character of discriminatory policies at a time when “domestic” firms and products are more difficult to recognise and interlinkages and policy leakages are the order of the day.” Globalization of Industry, supra note 72, at 42.
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Geza Feketekuty, The New Trade Agenda at 29, Occasional Paper 40 (Washington, D.C.: Group of Thirty, 1992).
The paper commenced with the statement: “As the Uruguay Round draws to a close... a whole new set of challenges [vi3, globalization of production and markets] has emerged since the Uruguay Round was launched.” The report concluded: “The multilateral trading system must inevitably adapt to the process of internationalization and globalization.” Geza Feketekuty, The New Trade Agenda at 29, Occasional Paper 40 (Washington, D.C.: Group of Thirty, 1992) Id. at 1, 31.
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Id. at 2–3.
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Economic Relations: A Necessary Basis for Peace, Address by Peter D. Sutherland, Director-General, World Trade Organization, to the Inaugural Conference of UCC 150, University College, Cork, January 3, 1995, at 2.
Sutherland went on to say that: “The achievement of the Uruguay Round [was] to extend liberalisation to international markets for goods, services and technology.” Consolidating Economic Globalization, Address by Peter D. Sutherland to the Canadian Club, Toronto, March 21, 1994, at 2–3.
Key Issues in the Global Economy-How the WTO Contributes to Global Solutions, Address by Peter D. Sutherland, Director-General, World Trade Organization, to senior media representatives, Davos, January 29, 1995, at 2–3.
Id. at 9.
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Editorial, Wall Street Journal, December 15, 1993.
Paul Krugman, The Age of Diminished Expectations: U.S. Economic Policy in the 1990S 61 (1992).
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Winham, G.R. (2005). An Interpretative History of the Uruguay Round Negotiation. In: Macrory, P.F.J., Appleton, A.E., Plummer, M.G. (eds) The World Trade Organization: Legal, Economic and Political Analysis. Springer, Boston, MA. https://doi.org/10.1007/0-387-22688-5_1
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