Added: 05/25/2006 |
The General Agreement on Tariffs and TradeWhile the United States has always been an active participant in the international trade, it failed to take a leadership role in global trade policy making in the years of the Great Depression. Thus, the trade policy has been long a tug of war between the legislative and executive branches, as these didn't agree on mix of trade protection and promotion.
In 1934, the United States initiated the Reciprocal Trade Agreements Act, according to which Congress agreed to allow the executive branch to negotiate bilateral trade agreements. However, the number of bilateral negotiations under the act was strictly limited and it didn't contribute much to the expansion of domestic or global trade. As a result of intense co-operation with the British government, the United States introduced two mechanisms to expand trade among nations, namely the International Trade Organization and the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade.
The latter was a temporary multilateral agreement that provided a forum to negotiate reduction of trade barriers among nations. The agreement was designed in accordance with the Reciprocal Trade Agreement Act that permitted the executive branch to negotiate trade agreements with the authority from the Congress.
The countries signing the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade negotiated new trade agreements, known as rounds. Each of such agreements bound them to reduce trade tariffs, with a number of treatments of individual products and with modifications and exceptions for each particular country. The first such agreement - Geneva Round was negotiated in 1948 by 23 countries, followed by Annecy Round (1949), Torquay Round (1951), Geneva Round (1956), Dillon Round (1962), Kennedy Round (1967), Tokyo Round (1979) and Uruguay Round (1986).
The General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade is the responsibility of the Council for Trade in Goods, composed of representatives from all WTO member countries. Currently the Goods Council features ten committees, which deal with such subjects of concern as market access, anti-dumping measures and subsidies. Each of these committees consists of all WTO member countries.
The Council is responsible for operation of the Agreement, as well as work of the committees and working groups on such activity sectors as market access for goods, agriculture, subsidies and countervailing measures, sanitary and phytosanitary measures, customs valuation, anti-dumping, import licensing, rules of origin, safeguards, investment, state trading enterprises and information technology agreement.
In 1945, the United States decided to create an international organization, which would provide a forum for negotiations and establish rules of procedure for handling international commercial policy. The International Trade Organization was created at a conference in Havana, Cuba.
For nearly four decades, the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade that incorporated the majority of the ITO principles was the framework for all multilateral trade negotiations to take place.
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