The most ambitious round of multilateral trade negotiations since the formation of the GATT was formally launched in Punta del Este, Uruguay in 1986. With more than 100 nations participating in the "Uruguay Round" negotiations, complex economic problems and difficult political realities made reaching international accord on major trading issues a long and arduous process. The three-volume set presents a history of these negotiations, portraying how participating nations reached their current positions on the proposed major changes in trade in agriculture and textiles, adoption of rules for trade in services, review of existing trade regulations, increased protection of intellectual property rights and the liberalization of the market for many important products. The set contains information which should be useful for all involved in international trade. Legal practitioners, business executives, academics and government officials seeking to understand the position of the important players and grasp the implications of the final agreement should find this factually-objective and politically-neutral account of the negotiations a useful resource. This is volume 1 of the set. The complete set is also available, as are individual chapters, allowing for the purchase of only that information in which a customer has a specific interest.

NAFTA has been described by one expert as being a partial customs union. It is, in any case, a special kind of free trade area because it consists of two highly developed economies and one large third world economy. In this book, the contributors examine the specific interests of the three member countries, Canada, Mexico, and the United States in the creation of NAFTA. They also assess the influence of this trade area on their economics. Looking to the future, doubts are expressed about the feasibility of using NAFTA (a hope expressed by the USA) as a stepping stone in the creation of a Free Trade Area of the Americas. Instead, the contributors see the consolidation of MERCOSUR in Latin America and the creation of a new Trans-Atlantic Market - as proposed by Sir Leon Brittan - as more likely developments.

Policy makers in Southern Africa are increasingly convinced that regional trade liberalization can improve growth performance and stimulate development throughout the region. To succeed where previous attempts have failed, however, governments must address two key issues. The first of these is policy coordination - the broad range of domestic policies must be made compatible with the proposed trade reforms. The second is institution building - concerted attention must be devoted to strengthening weak institutions and infrastructure. The contributors are among the leading authorities on regional integration in Africa.

World hunger is prevalent yet receives relatively less attention compared to poverty. The MDGs have taken a step to address this with the resolution of halving the number of starving people in the world by 2015. Hunger though is not a straightforward problem of producing enough to feed the world's population; it has many cross-cutting dimensions. This volume discusses the significance of human rights approaches to food and the way it relates to gender considerations, addressing links between hunger and the HIV/AIDS pandemic, agricultural productivity and the environment.

This book presents a detailed study of the interface between regional integration and competition policies of selected regional trade agreements (RTAs), and the potential of regional competition laws to help developing countries achieve their development goals. The book provides insights on the regional integration experiences in developing countries, their potential for development and the role of competition law and policy in the process. Moreover, the book emphasizes the development dimension both of regional competition policies and of competition law. This timely book delivers concrete proposals that will help to unleash the potential of regional integration and regional competition policies, and also help developing countries to fully enjoy the benefits deriving from a regional market. Bringing together analysis from well-known scholars in the developed world with practical insight from scholars in countries hoping to exploit the potential of competition law, this book will appeal to academics working in the field of competition law, practitioners, policymakers and officials from developing countries, as well as those in development organizations such as UNCTAD. Contributors: A. Amunategui Abad, M. Bakhoum, D.S. Beckford, J. Cortazar, J. Drexl, E.M. Fox, M.S. Gal, D.J. Gerber, G.K. Lipimile, G. Mamhare, J. Molestina, K. Moodaliyar, M. Ngom, T. Stewart, L. Thanadsillapakul, I.F. Wassmer

The fight between North and South over intellectual property (IP) reached new heights in the 1990s. In one corner, large multinational companies and developed countries sought to protect their investments. Opposing them, developing countries argued for the time and scope to pursue development strategies unshackled by rules forged to bolster the competitiveness of richer countries. The result was the WTO's deeply contested Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS). Widely resented by developing countries, TRIPS nonetheless permits them some hard-won flexibility. Puzzling, however, is why some developing countries have used that flexibility and others have not. Even more curious is that many of the poorest countries have made least use of the room for manouevre, despite securing some extra concessions. For developing countries, TRIPS did not end the pro-IP offensive. At the urging of industry lobbyists, powerful countries backtracked on the flexibilities in TRIPS and pursued even stronger global IP rules. To prevent precedents for weaker IP standards in poorer countries, they issued threats to market access, aid, investment, and political alliances. Further, they used new trade deals and, more subtly, capacity building (assisted by the World Intellectual Property Organization, among others) to leverage faster compliance and higher standards than TRIPS requires. Meanwhile, 'pro-development' advocates from civil society, other UN agencies, and developing countries worked to counter 'compliance-plus' pressures and defend the use of TRIPS flexibilities, sometimes with success. Within developing countries, most governments had little experience of IP laws and deferred TRIPS implementation to IP offices cut-off from trade politics and national policymaking, making them more vulnerable to the TRIPS-plus agenda. In many of the poorest African countries, regional IP arrangements magnified this effect. For scholars of international political economy and law, this book is the first detailed exploration of the links between global IP politics and the implementation of IP reforms. It exposes how power politics occur not just within global trade talks but afterwards when countries implement agreements. The Implementation Game will be of interest to all those engaged in debates on the global governance of trade and IP

This volume assesses the implementation of the EU's cohesion policy and the role that the policy has in stimulating ten new member states from eastern and southern European countries to join the EU in 2004 and in attracting another three to four countries that will join in the near future.

This book examines the nature of the evolutionary relationship that developed between the United States and the GATT (General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade) system, and considers the effects of this relationship on their individual evolution and development. These effects were felt, within the GATT system, on its role in international trade, manner and method of functioning, form, and the very nature of its existence; and, within the United States, on its international trade policy and role in the system, the nature of the relationship between the executive and legislative branches vis-a-vis trade, and the relationship between the branches of government and private industry.
The book begins by looking at the events, particularly in the 1920's and 1930's, that predated and created the environment out of which the GATT system developed. It then looks at the formation process and the development of the GATT system as a whole. Since the role of the United States was crucial throughout this entire process, the book examines that role in particular depth, especially as it reflected and helped to form US trade legislation. The role of the other countries throughout this entire process is included in the examination and analysis only in so far as they had an effect upon the evolution and development of the GATT system and affected the course of US action.

In his foreword to the book, Sidney Weintraub argues that the negotiations leading to the creation of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) may be the most important between the United States and Mexico since the 1848 Treaty of Guadalupe Hildago. This book examines those negotiations from the vantage point of one of the key Mexican officials, Hermann von Bertrab. As an insider, but as someone on the other side of the discussions, he provides a prospective rarely offered of contemporary American foreign and economic policymaking.

Concentrating on the negotiations between the United States and Mexico, with some analysis of the Canadian component, von Bertrab characterizes the discussions as moving through four stages: an initial fast track, the detailed examination of the proposals, a stage of mobilization political support and working out side agreements, and a ratification stage. All in all, a fascinating report on a major diplomatic event and an opportunity to see ourselves as we are seen by foreign officials. Of considerable interest to scholars and researchers of contemporary American foreign and economic policymaking and Latin American Studies.

This book presents a theoretical investigation of the formation of regional free trade agreements (FTAs), the behavior of global enterprises, and government trade policies in various game forms including multi-stage games, repeated games, and timing games. In the last few decades, the number of FTAs has been rapidly increasing in the world, especially in Asia. In particular, East Asian countries are expected to be main engines for sustaining the world economy. Focusing on East Asian economies, strategic behaviors of governments and firms in order to attain their own aims are examined. The analytical methods employed in this book are those currently being developed or that recently have been created. The topics are important contemporary issues in regional areas facing the rapid economic changes brought about by globalization. Most chapters of this book are based on original work that was published in international journals but now has been completely rewritten, with restructuring and extension of the original work. This book, with its up-to-date information, will be of interest to academic researchers in universities and economic research institutions and to students working on advanced degrees in economics.

This book shows how large an impact the WTO has on developing countries. It assesses the subsidies given and shows how they will be affected by trade liberalization. It looks in particular at the TRIPS agreement and assesses the costs and benefits that it will have for developing countries.

The Domestic Politics of International Trade considers the issues surrounding intellectual property rights in international trade negotiations in order to examine the challenges posed to domestic policy-makers by the increasingly broad nature of Free Trade Agreements (FTAs). Throughout the book the author demonstrates the importance of domestic politics in understanding the nature and outcome of international negotiations, particularly as they relate to international economic diplomacy. The book looks in detail at the intellectual property negotiations which formed part of the US-Peru and US-Colombia Free Trade Agreements and analyses the extent to which public health authorities and other parties affected by the increased levels of intellectual property protection were integrated into the negotiation process. The book then juxtaposes these findings with an analysis of the domestic origins of US negotiation objectives in the field of intellectual property, paying particular attention to the role of the private sector in the development of these objectives. Based on a substantial amount of empirical research, including approximately 100 interviews with negotiators, capital based policy-makers, private sector representatives, and civil society organisations in Lima, Bogota and Washington, DC, this book offers a rare account of different stakeholders' perceptions of the FTA negotiation process. Ultimately, the book succeeds in integrating the study of domestic politics with that of international negotiations. This book will be of particular interest to academics as well as practitioners and students in the fields of international law, economic law, intellectual property, political economy, international relations, comparative politics and government.

Traditional theories suggest that developing countries lack influence in the trade regime. In A Social Theory of the WTO, Jane Ford uses a social theory or constructivist approach to show that developing countries played a critical role in strengthening multilateralism in the World Trade Organization. By adopting a new role in trade negotiations during the Uruguay Round negotiations, developing countries helped to strengthen trade rules and change the trading culture of limited multilateralism.

The World Trade Organization (WTO) is an incomplete contract among sovereign countries. Trade policy flexibility mechanisms are designed to deal with contractual gaps, which are the inevitable consequence of this contractual incompleteness. Trade policy flexibility mechanisms are backed up by enforcement instruments which allow for punishment of illegal extra-contractual conduct. This book offers a legal and economic analysis of contractual escape and punishment in the WTO. It assesses the interrelation between contractual incompleteness, trade policy flexibility mechanisms, contract enforcement, and WTO Members' willingness to co-operate and to commit to trade liberalization. It contributes to the body of WTO scholarship by providing a systematic assessment of the weaknesses of the current regime of escape and punishment in the WTO, and the systemic implications that these weaknesses have for the international trading system, before offering a reform agenda that is concrete, politically realistic, and systemically viable.

The Uruguay Round trade agreement, recently ratified by Congress, was the eighth in a series of negotiations under the auspices of the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT). Like the ratification proceddings, the negotiations were both contentious and extended. In the end, they substantially changed the structure of the GATT. From its traditional emphasis on reducing formal barriers to trade in goods, the GATT has now moved to a broader agenda of issues that will dominate in a more integrated world economy. The new GATT encompasses a set of agreements governing trade in goods, trade in services, the protection of intellectual property rights, and new procedures for resolving trade disputes. All of these measures are to be unified under a new institutional structure, the World Trade Organization. In this book, the major features of the new GATT are reviewed and assessed in terms of their implications for the United States. The contributors are Alan Deardorff, University of Michigan; Bernard Hoekman, the World Bank; John Jackson, University of Michigan School of Law; and Tim Josling, Food Research Institute, Stanford University. Susan M. Collins is a senior fellow in the Economic Studies program at Brookings and associate professor of economics at Georgetown University. Barry P. Bosworth, a senior fellow at Brookings, is the editor and author of numerous Brookings books, including The Chilean Economy: Policy Lessons and Challenges (Brookings, 1994) and Saving and Investment in a Global Economy (Brookings, 1993).

The purpose of this book is to make the results of the Uruguay Round of Trade Negotiations easier to understand. The Uruguay Round, one of the longest and most complex economic negotiations ever undertaken, was completed successfully in December 1993. Its results are embodied in nearly 30 legal agreements and a large number of supplementary decisions, as well as a large number of highly detailed separate undertakings in which each country specifies the levels of trade restrictions, which it promises not to exceed, for thousands of different products or services. The joint agreements and decisions alone add up to well over 500 pages of printed text, and the individual undertakings, or schedules, bring the total volume of the results of the Uruguay Round to almost 300,000 pages. This formidable mass of paper embodies a total overhaul of the basic rules and institutions of world trade, and the birth of a new institution, the World Trade Organization.

This book examines the labour standards provisions in a number of Regional and Bilateral Trade Agreements, and assesses the potential of using the relevant clauses in these trade agreements as a benchmark for a multilateral approach. Based on the lessons learned from the Regional model, the book proposes a Global Labour and Trade Framework Agreement (GLTFA) combined with a joint ILO/WTO enforcement mechanism to resolve the contentious issue of the link between the CLS and international trade. The history of the linkage between the Core Labour Standards (CLS) and international trade dates back roughly 150 years, and has recently become one of the most vexing issues facing policy-makers. At the heart of the debate is the question whether or not trade sanctions should be imposed on countries that do not respect the CLS as embodied in multilateral conventions administered by the International Labour Organization (ILO). Concretely, this would entail inserting a social clause in the World Trade Organization (WTO) rules, and would trigger the imposition of sanctions on those countries that do not adhere to the CLS.

The book deals with both the short and the long-run effects of the Uruguay Round: the reduction in the obstacles to trade, the enlargement of the multilateral system, the new institutional framework and the balance between regionalism and multilateralism in world trade relations. Its conclusions are based on theory, political economy and empirical analysis.

Revealing a powerful economic motive behind Taiwan's 1990 application for GATT membership, CHO questions those who interpreted it solely as a political move designed to break that island nation's diplomatic isolation. Flourishing economically since the 1950s despite non-GATT membership, matters changed for Taiwan in the 1980s when it became both big and small. As a big trader, its dual trade regime was no longer tolerated, while as a small economy with little political clout, Taiwan was pushed to liberalize its trade practices by bilateral pressures. Taiwan believes that the most-favored nation principle and diffuse reciprocity embedded in GATT/WTO's multilateralism will sheild Taiwan from the pernicious effects of bilateral asymmetry while simultaneously providing it with more international living space.

The Alpha Barrier was officially featured at a Roundtable discussion facilitated by the National Defense University, Washington D.C. on April 7, 2010. On that occasion, strategic planners, policy personnel and decision makers representative of the highest levels of government discussed and offered perspectives on the arguments put forward in the book. Within 2 days of the Roundtable, two strategically timed and calibrated visits were launched to countries that were identified in the publication as key geo-strategic players that should be of immediate concern to the United States, 1. The visit of Defence Secretary Robert Gates in April. The visit of Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton in June The successive itineraries were specifically intended to bolster and consolidate accords in the area of defense cooperation, to reaffirm the commitment of the Obama administration to the promotion of cooperation and partnership and to render tangible support for the Caribbean Basin Security Initiative in the form of a $73 million Congressional budgetary allocation. The latter would fuel a collective regional offensive against the trafficking of drugs and firearms and effectively stymie the cross-border flows of illicit proceeds derived from the drug trade. These high-profiled visits have lent salience and relevancy to the arguments advanced in The Alpha Barrier...that there is a political imperative for the Obama administration to reinvigorate relationships between the United States and specific players in the south and thereby redress the legacy of diffused interest that typified the post 9/11 era. This compels the application of a new brand of statecraft that is compatible with a drastically altered strategic environment. Key components of this statecraft must necessarily be multilateralism and consensual decision making. The selective delivery of aid packages is merely a first step. The Alpha Barrier is an insightful book that touches on the above topics in detail, and offers clear-minded discussion on these very important issues.

This book examines the relationship between globalisation and regionalism through a detailed analysis of the ASEAN Free Trade Area (AFTA) project. It analyses how the interaction between globalisation and domestic politics shaped the evolution of AFTA over the past 10 years, arguing that although AFTA was triggered primarily by the pressures of globalisation, it was a tussle between the imperatives of growth and domestic distribution that shaped the way economic cooperation unfolded and the forms it took.

eBook available with sample pages: 020313088X

In today's global economy, NAFTA continues to present unprecedented opportunities for companies in cross-border commerce. 'Uniting North American Business: NAFTA Best Practices' focuses on best business practices and lessons learned in the years since the NAFTA agreement was first signed, and their impact on both the economy and society. 'Uniting North American Business' provides you with the skills and competencies necessary to become more effective business managers and citizens in NAFTA countries by considering: * What is the scope of the NAFTA agreement itself?* What are some of the positive benefits of NAFTA?* What is really causing job loss attributed to NAFTA?* What should we know about Canada, the United States, and Mexico to better understand the culture and management philosophies of our partners?* What will society look like if current trends continue?

Despite the Doha declaration of November 2001, the failure to start a new round of global trade negotiations at Seattle in December 1999 and the hostility of protesters to the trade liberalization process and growing global economic and social disparities was a wake-up call for the World Trade Organisation (WTO). The ambitious goal of this ground-breaking book is to identify the strengths and weaknesses of liberalized world trade, in particular in the agricultural sector, and to investigate to what extent the current WTO agreements provide the necessary fail-safe devices to react to trade-related negative impacts on sustainability, environmental protection and food security. The background and interrelationship between the WTO, the tenets of sustainable development and the unique features of the agriculture and forestry sectors are explored, and conclusions regarding the deficits of the world trade system and its conflicts with basic societal goals - such as sustainability - are drawn. Agriculture and forestry have a particular affinity with what the authors call "strong sustainability" and are to be among the major agenda items in forthcoming WTO negotiations. The book proposes that sustainable agricultural production techniques such as integrated and organic farming provide a series of related services to community and environment which could be severely prejudiced by wholesale trade liberalization and the imposition of the large-scale production methods of the mega-trade giants of the USA and Europe. And yet the concept of sustainability is referred to only tangentially in the existing WTO agenda. The WTO, Agriculture and Sustainable Development argues that, without a formal recognition of this failing, the premise that free trade is inherently advantageous for all countries is a falsehood. Further, unfettered liberalization is unsustainable and a social and environmental multilateral framework must be agreed to reinterpret or adapt a host of WTO regulations that are at odds with sustainable development. The core problem is that, under the current system, import duties can only be differentiated by direct goods and services and not by their means of production - sustainable or otherwise. Therefore, a range of environmental policy measures in the agricultural sector, such as the consideration of product life-cycles, the internalization of external costs and a coupling of trade liberalization with ecological obligations are proposed by the authors. In addition, they argue that unsustainable economic short-termism must be curbed and the use of the stick of trade sanctions and the carrot of financial benefits for good environmental performance be permitted to promote sustainable agricultural practices. This book will contribute greatly in addressing the lack of basic theoretical arguments at the intersection between trade and sustainable development - a failing that has already been bemoaned by trade policy-makers. It is highly recommended reading for all those involved or interested in the WTO negotiations, whether from multilateral organizations, governments, industry or civil society.