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MAKING THE WORLD _ TRADE REGIME WORK: AN AGENDA FOR GATT Bart S. Fisher O? 23 September 1985 President Reagan announced several steps to alleviate the burgeoning $150 billion U.S. trade deficit. Among these steps was a commitment to work with Congress on "authority to support our new trade negotiating initiatives that would, among other things, reduce tariffs and attempt to dismantle all other trade barriers."1 Reagan's wishes were obliged two months later, when on 27 November the ninety member countries of the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (gatt) unanimously agreed to embark on a new round of multilateral trade negotiations, the eighth since World War II. Meeting in Geneva, the seat of the gatt Secretariat, officials from the member countries appointed a working party to devise a detailed program for the negotiations. The working party is to conclude its deliberations inJuly of this year to permit its recommendations to be adopted at the meeting of trade ministers scheduled for September. The negotiations are expected to begin in earnest shortly thereafter. This will mark the first time that gatt signatories have assembled in the multilateral trade negotiations format since the close of the Tokyo Round in 1979. 1 . Remarks by President Reagan to business leaders and members of the President's Exports Council and Advisory Council for Trade Negotiations, 23 September 1985. President Reagan had already endorsed the concept of a new gatt round of negotiations in his 1985 State of the Union address. Bart S. Fisher is a Washington lawyer and professorial lecturer in international relations at The Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies. The author would like to thank Dr. Isaiah Frank and Dr. Charles Pearson for their helpful comments on earlier drafts of this article. 53 54 SAIS REVIEW What should be the agenda for the next round of gatt negotiations? Is the convening of a new round a useful exercise at this time, and if so, for which countries? This essay describes the issues that a new gatt round must deal with in terms of a series of needed reforms of international economic institutions. These issues revolve around the key question, What can be done to strengthen the fabric of the international trading system in a new gatt round? The next round of multilateral trade negotiations must address six different problem areas in order to be successful: (1) strengthening the gatt in the formulation and enforcement of trade rules, (2) the relation of the gatt to other economic institutions, (3) the role of less developed countries in the international system, (4) the application of most-favorednation (mfn) treatment, (5) the scope of trade institution coverage, and (6) reductions in tariff and nontariff barriers to trade. These problems are considered in more detail below.2 1 . Strengthening the GATT. The failure of the international community to establish the International Trade Organization after World War II left an institutional vacuum in international decisionmaking in the trade area. The gatt was created not as a permanent international organization but as an agreement among nations to uphold certain principles. More than thirty-five years later, the gatt remains a contract supported by an extremely weak organizational infrastructure. Members agree to meet only periodically to address matters as they arise.3 In an increasingly conflictual international trading system these irregular and infrequent negotiations are insufficient. A mechanism is needed to ensure continuity in the formulation and enforcement of trade rules. We need to transcend the idea of trade regulation as a "movable feast" that occurs whenever the international trading system faces a crisis. It matters little whether the gatt itself is transmogrified from a contract to an institution or whether a completely new international trade organization is established. What is crucial, however, is the creation of an entity to which enough power has been ceded by the signatory nations to solve international trade problems as they arise, rather than in response to long-festering crises. 2.This conceptual framework for analyzing the international trading system is derived from the report of an American Society of International Law Panel on International Trade Policy and Institutions, Re-Making the System ofWorld Trade: A Proposalfor Institutional Reform, 1976. The...

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