General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade

So we had the so-called Bretton Woods institutions, the International Monetary Fund, and the World Bank.

And on the trade side, we had the GATT, the General Agreements on Tariffs and Trade.

And I argued in my Wire China interview that the GATT was highly successful, more successful than we had initially expected it to be, given that it was not nearly as elaborate as the initial vision, which was for an international trade organization.

But I argued in that interview that because it had limited aims, We were able to maintain a systemic compatibility within the system that allowed liberalization to go forward at a robust but sustainable pace.

After the end of the Cold War, when the GATT was transformed into the much more ambitious World Trade Organization, then I argue we began to get into difficulties.

So it was a modest aim to begin with and a much more grandiose vision in the second round with WTO.

Well, in particular, in the second round, we fully intended it for it to be a universal system.

Right.

He's one of Canada's most experienced international trade lawyers.

He served as a Canadian diplomat, including at the United Nations and the GATT, G-A-T-T, that's the predecessor of the World Trade Organization.

And he has spent more than five decades working on international trade law and Canada-U.S. economic relations.

He's now a senior fellow at the C.D. Howe Institute.

Stay tuned.

The trade tie-in for 93, on December 15th, 1993, the GATT's Uruguay Round finally wrapped up.

It's my favorite round.

That was a one hell of a round, it was

Under the authority of the Reciprocal Trade Agreements Act, the United States joined with twenty-two other major trading nations at Geneva in nineteen forty-seven in the greatest tariff bargaining meeting in history.

The result of that meeting was a general agreement on tariffs and trade, GATT.

Again, was a general agreement on tariffs and trade, GATT.

And you thought GATT was new.

GATT has been planned and has been in the workings and has been an actual fact for many years.

It was GATT that gave the foreign nations the edge in charging us higher tariffs while we lowered ours.

It has caused the destruction of the industrial base of the United States of America, and it's continuing with NAFTA.

The result of that meeting was a general agreement on tariffs and trade, GATT, which reduced tariff rates sharply, affected half the world's imports.

Now, I talked a little bit yesterday about sort of the global macro.

Coming out of World War II, the US was instrumental in kind of laying out the institutions that have really driven global trade, the global economy, GATT, government trades and tariffs, Bretton Woods on

currencies.

Right.

The rules-based global trading system was established following World War II.

It began as the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade, the GATT, G-A-T-T, which was later integrated into a larger set of agreements establishing the WTO.

This system aimed to reduce trade barriers and prevent trade wars by establishing rules for the use of tariffs.

Among this system's core rules with regard to tariffs are non-discrimination.

Safety valves.

The WTO agreements permit members to raise tariffs to address unfair trade practices and to allow domestic industries to adjust to sudden surges in imports in some circumstances.

Following the establishment of the GATT in 1947 and the WTO in 1995, global tariff rates declined, spurring trade and opening markets for U.S. exports.

Since the establishment of the WTO, the value of exports of U.S. goods has increased more than 160%, adjusted for inflation.

Now, between negotiating with the Europeans, economic partnership agreements are the major tool the Europeans use.

Negotiating in the WTO, originally the GATT, General Agreement on Tariff and Trade and so on.

Given their own negotiations, the African Continental Free Trade Agreement, their regional economic communities, they're up there.

I mean, they now have a core of negotiators of economics.