The GATT was established in 1947 as a multilateral agreement on international trade. Of the eight rounds of negotiations, the Uruguay Round, covering the period from 1981 to 1994, had the widest participation and involved the most intensive negotiations. It was also the most comprehensive round, encompassing new areas such as trade in services and the protection of intellectual property, as well as longstanding problem areas such as agriculture and textiles. Most significantly, this round resulted in the establishment of a permanent World Trade Organization, which will provide the institutional basis for future international trade and a forum for settlement of disputes.

This volume is dedicated to understanding the political economy obstacles to trade reform, especially global agricultural trade reform, and how these obstacles can be surmounted. The focus is on the trade reform under the GATT negotiations. New political-economic methodologies are used to assess and evaluate the obstacles and original scholarly analyses have been designed to explain why agriculture - among so many topics - became such a significant problem in the most recent Uruguay Round of the GATT.

International experts from law, economics and political science provide in-depth analysis of international trade issues. Attorneys, economists and political scientists adopt a common viewpoint, entitled 'transcending the ostensible'. This approach directs particular attention to the possibility that WTO legal institutions, like other international legal institutions, will function in unexpected ways due to the political and economic conditions of the international environment in which they have been created, and in which they operate. A range of trade problems are considered here. Topics include the constitutional dimensions of international trade law, adding subjects and restructuring existing subjects to international trade law, the legal relations between developed and developing countries, and the operation of the WTO dispute settlement procedure. This will be an essential volume for professionals and academics involved with international trade policy.

To what extent does domestic politics affect the agreement reached in an international trade negotiation? In order to address this question, Christopher C. Meyerson develops an approach to analyzing the relationship between domestic politics and international relations in trade policymaking. This approach is used to analyze both American and Japanese trade policymaking and US-Japan trade negotiations, especially during the GATT Uruguay Round agriculture negotiations that occurred between 1986 and 1994. Meyerson not only develops an innovative approach to the analysis of the relationship between domestic politics and international relations in trade policymaking, but also, using publicly available GATT documents and publications, US Congressional hearings and Japanese-language sources, provides a strong narrative description of the roles of the United States and Japan in the GATT Uruguay Round agriculture negotiations.

Key players in world trade policy formation discuss the origins of the World Trade Organization--and where it is going

New to this edition.