What's at Stake for the LDCs, Now that the Uruguay Round Talks have been Suspended? [with Comments]

Until negotiations collapsed in early December, the Uruguay Round gave promise of being the most significant multilateral trade negotiation since 1947, when the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GA TI) was implemented and tariffs levels of the industrial countries were sharply cut. There are at least three reasons for this conclusion. First, by agreeing at the outset to bring both agriculture and textiles under GATT discipline, the participants created the opportunity for both rich and poor agricultural exporting nations and relatively low-wage, newly industrializing LDCs to benefit significantly from GATT-sponsored trade negotiations. Prior to the Uruguay Round, the benefits to these countries of such negotiations had been limited, since these two sectors were excluded from any significant liberalization. Second, by agreeing to formulate new rules relating to trade in services, trade-related aspects of· intellectual property rights, and trade-related investment issues, members took an important step in modernizing the GATT. As economic globalization has accelerated, there is a growing realization that arms-length merchandise transactions, the traditional concern of the GATT, are only one aspect of the real-side economic relations of current concern to national policy-makers and the economic interests they represent Now international commercial activities also involve merchandise trade among multinational firms and their foreign affiliates, international trade in services among independent agents as well as among affiliated enterprises, foreign direct investment activities, production nf goods and services in foreign affiliates for sale either abroad or at home, international flows of technology, and temporary movements of labour across borders. Although the so-called new issues in the Uruguay Round do not cover all of these matters, they go a considerable way in making the GATT more relevant for dealing with the problems of increasing internationalization.