ECON310-1401A-04
Professor Fendler
By Mia Rose
January 27, 2014
The General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) was enforced on the first day of January in 1948 following World War II. GATT was designed to assist economic growth and includes the governments of Australia, Belgium, Brazil, Burma, Canada, Ceylon, Chile, China, Cuba, Czechoslovak, French Republic, India, Lebanon, the Grand-Duchy of Luxemburg, Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Pakistan, Southern Rhodesia, Syria, South Africa, Great Britain, Northern Ireland, and the United States of America. These mentioned governments entered into the arrangements with a mutual desire to raise living standards by expanding worldwide. The GATT was to reduce tariffs and lift barriers. The Council for Trade in Goods is the responsible party for GATT and is made up of representatives from the World Trade Organization (WTO) from each country. There are ten sections that are covered by GATT these are: agriculture, market access for goods, sanitary and phytosanitary measures, subsidies and countervailing measure, anti-dumping, customs valuation, rules of origin, import licensing, investment, safeguards, state trading enterprises, and information technology agreement. The agricultural agreement allowed countries to use export subsidies, however the subsidies should not be used to capture more than and “equitable share” of world exports of the product concerned. (Article XVI: 3) Import restrictions were also implemented so that domestic production increased. Market access for goods is implemented for certain products to enter the market at a specific time. The reason for this is to adhere to the schedule of concessions which means that the tariff rate will not exceed a certain amount. The sanitary and phytosanitary measures are the standards that govern how food safety and animal and plant health rules are set. This ensures that governments do not create
References: European Commission, Trade, Retrieved from http://ec.europa.eu/trade/policy/eu-position-in-world-trade/ Huffington Post, Business, Has NAFTA Benefited Americans? Michele Nash-Hoff; Retrieved from http://www.huffingtonpost.com/michele-nashhoff/ Investopedia, Dictionary, Retrieved from http://www.investopedia.com/terms/n/nafta.asp World Trade Organization (WTO) Retrieved from http://www.wto.org/