Will agriculture always remain a problem in GATT?

GATT has had extraordinarily scant “success” in the agricultural sphere up to now. To what extent is this due to the special status accorded to agriculture in GATT? Are trends discernible within GATT that might lead to an improvement in the situation? Might the Uruguay Round produce fundamentally new solutions?     

WTO法新发展与我国外贸法的完善

乌拉圭回合通过的一系列多边贸易协定标志着WTO法的新发展，使原来仅以货物贸易关系为调整对象的GATT法律体系发展成为既调整货物贸易，又调整技术贸易和服务贸易三大法律关系的WTO法律体系：WTO法的新发展既体现在对GATT法律体系的扩充，又体现在对GATT立法内容的修订与补充上：文章在论述WTO法新发展的基础上，探讨我国外贸法与外贸制度中迫切需要完善的若干问题。     

Turning point for European Agricultural Policy?

Agriculture is undoubtedly the most important and controversial topic in the ongoing Uruguay Round of the GATT. Can a compromise between the divergent positions of the EC and the USA on agricultural trade be found? Does the Uruguay Round mark a turning point for the EC’s Common Agricultural Policy?     

Historical Learning in the Design of WTO Rules: The EC Sugar Case

The Uruguay Round Agreement made significant changes to the governance of international trade. Trade rules and dispute settlement mechanisms were altered and a series of specific agreements provided for liberalisation across economic sectors. The Agreement on Agriculture, arguably the most difficult and contentious to negotiate, permitted the continued use of trade‐distorting instruments, both domestically and at the border. Rule‐enforcement in agriculture therefore relies crucially on the clarity of the rules. This paper provides an in‐depth study of a unique and critical case for understanding the new rules: the EC sugar regime. This policy was challenged unsuccessfully under the pre‐Uruguay Round rules, but successfully under the new rules. This case is particularly valuable in allowing us to isolate the effect of the Uruguay Round on agricultural trade disputes: the policy under challenge was essentially unchanged and the legal actions addressed the same concern – excessive export subsidisation. Drawing on primary and secondary materials and interviews with key policy actors, sugar is used to illustrate how those involved in the multilateral process learned from particular rule weaknesses revealed in earlier cases, revising those rules in the Uruguay Round in such a way that dispute panels can more readily and objectively determine rule breaches.     

“蓝箱”与“新蓝箱”:潜在影响与谈判立场

"蓝箱"支持是农业国内支持政策的重要组成部分,其政策改革也成为了世贸组织农业谈判的焦点之一。在回顾乌拉圭回合"蓝箱"支持使用状况的基础上,文章利用"假设削减方案"的研究方法评估了多哈回合"新蓝箱"对中国和主要成员国的潜在影响,并为中国在"蓝箱"政策改革的后续谈判提出了可供选择的提案。     

The internationalization of competition policy: implications for international business

In the post–Uruguay Round World Trading System and with the creation of the World Trade Organization (WTO), a new set of agendas on the governance of the world economy has emerged. Among them are the relationship between trade and social policy, trade and the environment, and trade and competition policy. These issues are new in the sense that policymakers have, until now, avoided drawing direct‐policy linkages between them. The main reason for this is that traditionally social and competition policies have been domestic policy domains that international policymakers were prevented from influencing. While environmental policy has been subject to several international negotiations, the link between trade and the environment has been relatively under‐discussed in the GATT. Moreover, there have been few international agreements that have drawn a direct link between trade and the environment.¹ The focus of this paper is the relationship between trade and competition policy. In particular, this paper seeks to address the issues related to international competition policy and the concerns and problems faced by international business in this context. ¹ An exception being the agreement on trade in endangered species (CITES). © 2000 John Wiley & Sons, Inc.     

The WTO,the Environment and Health and Safety Standards

The World Trade Organization (WTO) is a product of the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT). The WTO was created in the last round of negotiations (Uruguay Round, 1986‐94) to provide a stronger set of institutions to administer the various agreements negotiated under the GATT framework. Because the WTO is more powerful than its predecessors, critics claim that it poses a threat to national sovereignty. Concerns about the ability of nations to set their own environmental and health and safety agendas have figured prominently in these critiques. In addition, critics suggest that the WTO prioritises trade objectives at the expense of environmental and health and safety objectives. The article explores the extent to which the WTO has been able to reconcile trade, environmental and health and safety objectives by analysing its rulings on these matters. Overall, this analysis suggests that the WTO dispute resolution process has balanced all three sets of objectives. However, it is important to note the small number of disputes to date; only 21of the 175 disputes before the WTO involve environmental and health and safety matters. Further, the WTO has issued decisions in only six of these cases.     

How Effective are WTO Disciplines on Domestic Support and Market Access for Agriculture?

A new round of trade negotiations through the World Trade Organization (WTO) was launched in 2001. One of the major aims of the Doha Development Round is to reduce agricultural protection and impose greater discipline on domestic agricultural subsidies, particularly those that are the most trade distorting. In this article, we examine whether the proposed WTO modalities for agriculture will actually achieve this aim in Norway, which ranks among the top providers of government assistance for agriculture. Norway has a complex system of farm subsidies buttressed by substantial import protection. The extent to which its agricultural support policies will have to change in response to new WTO disciplines provides an important indication of how successful these are likely to be. We find that Norway will probably be able to sustain its current agricultural activity and production levels while staying within the new WTO rules. Following recent practice in some other WTO members, Norway will be able to reduce its notified support without making real changes in some of its programmes. However, there will have to be a shift from market price support, which is paid for by consumers through higher food prices, to budgetary support paid by taxpayers. This could generate increased domestic pressure for policy reform.     

Implementing the Uruguay Round Agreements: Problems for Developing Countries

Unilateral removal of trade restrictions is good economics, but it is often bad domestic politics. GATT negotiations for 50 years provided a mechanism to overcome this political incorrectness. The Uruguay Round carried multilateral negotiations into many ‘new areas’ with more complex economics – areas of regulation that establish the basic business environment in the domestic economy, e.g., technical, sanitary and phytosanitary standards; intellectual property law. Doing these things is costly and you can get it wrong – the economic correctness is not so simple as the economic correctness of removing trade restrictions. Making economic sense in these areas requires cost‐benefit analysis, experimentation, projects tailored to specific problems. Some developing countries would benefit from reforms in the new areas, but the Uruguay Round requirements do not identify the problems that exist in developing countries and they consequently demand establishment of institutions and regulations that will impose higher costs than benefits on the countries that implement them. Implementation issues are development issues, not trade issues. The procedures of the World Bank are suited to taking on such matters, those of the WTO are not.     

The North American–European Union Dispute Over Beef Produced Using Growth Hormones: A Major Test for the New International Trade Regime

At the time, the negotiation of the SPS agreement was seen as a major accomplishment of the Uruguay Round. One of the first major tests of both the SPS and the WTO’s new dispute settlement system was the long standing and acrimonious dispute between the EU and the US and Canada over trade in beef produced using hormones. Both the SPS and the disputes system performed as expected but the EU, the loser in the case, has chosen to ignore the WTO Panel’s ruling and accept retaliation. As a result, the credibility of the WTO is threatened and the outcome suggests that new negotiations may be required. The issues in the case are outlined and implications for trade in biological products drawn.     

WTO新一轮农业谈判中的“新蓝箱”措施评析

新一轮农业谈判多哈回合谈判框架协议,对农业国内支持政策“蓝箱”措施进行重新定义。根据《农业协议》规定,发达国家需逐渐削减黄箱措施对农业的综合支持量,而“新蓝箱”措施的出台与WTO农业谈判追求贸易自由化的进程相悖。本文概括世界各国蓝箱措施的实施情况,分析“新蓝箱”措施出台的背景、原因,客观评价“新蓝箱”对国际农产品贸易格局的影响。     

Liberalization strategies for free trade in services

Trade in services is being dealt with in GATT negotiations for the first time in the present Uruguay Round. The discussion on the proper liberalization instrument to be applied to trade in services is highly controversial. This paper attempts to clarify the discussion and outline rational policy options.     

Agriculture in Eastern European countries: Light at the end of the tunnel?

Following recent events in East European countries the question has arisen as to what effect the possible changes in the agricultural policies of these countries might have on agricultural production and trade. Our author addresses this question paying special regard to the consequences for EC agriculture and the present GATT Round.     

The Trade Policy Review Mechanism

The “Trade Policy Review Mechanism” passed within the framework of the Uruguay Round is intended to increase the transparency of national trade policies and to improve adherence to the rules of GATT. The following article offers a first evaluation of the new instrument.     

Developing Countries in the WTO System: Applying Robert Hudec's Analysis to the Doha Round

In his 1987 Developing Countries in the GATT System, Robert Hudec concluded that the identity of developing countries in the GATT system was primarily a matter of their demanding non‐reciprocal and preferential treatment, developed countries responding grudgingly to those demands and that this situation had been unfruitful either to support developing country reforms or to discipline developed country restrictions aimed at developing countries. Hudec was pessimistic about the relationship becoming more productive, but his expression of despair offered a glimmer of hope: ‘There are those who believe that the GATT has become so committed to the current policy that the only way to change it would be to start a new organization’. A new organisation was started, the World Trade Organization, but has the WTO achieved what Hudec hoped a new organisation might? At the 1987–95 Uruguay Round, developing country leaders acted as Hudec had hoped. They used international rules and bindings as leverage to support their own internally‐driven reforms; to overcome generations of accumulated protection, to lock in reforms against the backsliding that had undone previous reforms. Dealing with the Uruguay Round's ‘unbalanced outcome’ and the overlapping ‘implementation problem’ have shaped the Doha Round, but the negotiations have misconceived and mismanaged both issues. Rather than seeking to identify their real economics, the negotiations have gone back to the traditional idea of special and differential treatment. Perhaps the largest cost of this mismanagement is that in many developing countries the unilateral momentum for liberalisation has waned. To the extent that the Doha negotiations have drawn attention away from the domestic issues that were the basis of developing country liberalisation – and enhanced the status of negotiators relative to the leaders who fought at home for reform – they have contributed to that waning.     

世贸组织《农业协定》中的“蓝箱”支持

“蓝箱”支持是世贸组织《农业协定》国内支持中的一种措施,它的特征是在成员方实施限产计划的条件下对农民的一种补贴。目前,世贸组织有7个成员方使用“蓝箱”支持。2004年7月,“多哈议程”达成了农业谈判框架协议。本文就“蓝箱”支持的若干问题作了全面的介绍和分析。内容涉及:“蓝箱”支持的含义;“蓝箱”支持的实施;“蓝箱”支持引起的三个问题;“蓝箱”支持与世贸组织新一轮农业谈判。     

多哈回合中国内支持谈判的立场分析

国内支持是WTO<农业协定>中的"三大支柱"(市场准入、出口补贴和国内支持)之一,是发达国家对农业进行保护和支持重点使用的手段,压低了世界市场的农产品价格,恶化了农产品出口国的贸易条件,造成了农产品贸易环境的扭曲.虽然乌拉圭回合达成了趋向自由贸易的<农业协定>,对国内支持也形成了一定的约束,但国内支持政策的庞杂、各个利益集团立场的分歧等诸多原因使其在多边贸易谈判中依然是命运堪忧.文章从欧盟、美国等代表性国家和利益集团在多哈回合农业谈判中"国内支持"政策上的立场和分歧,揭示了其立场背后的根本原因,预言农业谈判在该项议题上的可能进展.     

The US-EC confrontation in the GATT from an EC perspective

Negotiations on agriculture have for a long time been the centre piece and the stumbling block of the Uruguay Round. While the EC has had to bear the brunt of public criticism, the US has clearly contributed its fair share to bringing about the present unsatisfactory state of affairs. This article focuses on the latter's role in international agricultural trade.     

Services and the GATT

The Uruguay Round of the GATT represents a test of the adaptability and reformability of the multilateral trading system. This is particularly true with regard to trade in services, the treatment of which within GATT has been resisted (to varying degrees) by many developing countries. The following two articles deal with different aspects of this issue.     

多哈回合农业国内支持谈判的进展与中国农业政策的调整

国内支持是农业谈判三大支柱之一,通过研究WTO最新的模式草案,并与乌拉圭回合农业协定相比较,可以看出国内支持谈判具体取得的进展;接着通过研究我国农业国内支持的实施现状,分析了我国入世承诺执行情况,结果表明我国很好地履行了入世承诺;最后根据模式草案的规定,指出今后我国农业政策的调整方向。