GOV 312L Lecture Notes - Lecture 19: General Agreement On Tariffs And Trade, World Trade Organization, Free Trade
Document Summary
Multilateral international organization designed to support reduction of trade barriers on a reciprocal basis. Provided series of rules that would guide negotiating rounds during the cold war. No enforcement capabilities, trade disputes handled on a bilateral basis. Membership in the gatt boosted a country"s aggregate trade flows during the cold war. Key difference: institutionalized a dispute settlement mechanism with established procedures for filing grievance, investigating complaints, and punishing defection. Designed to ensure that states uphold existing trade concessions (ex: tariff cuts) negotiated through gatt/wto. Judicial panel can enforce these obligations by authorizing compensation to injured party in form of trade sanctions; meant as a deterrent. Interesting: plaintiff has a lot of discretion on where to impose retaliatory tariffs. Political logic: wto enforcement capacity keeps global economy open by punishing states pursuing protection. While successful at preserving existing trade concessions, wto relatively ineffective over last decade in securing further trade liberalization because limited support in developed world (us, europe, japan)
