Agricultural trade, always a source of international friction, will remain a contentious issue in the years to come. The GATT agreement achieved only partial trade liberalization; recognizing this, the agreement calls for a continuation of the negotiation process to achieve the long-run goal of a “substantial reduction in agricultural support and protection.†In any case, it is clear that U.S.-European Union (EU) agricultural trade relations will remain central to any future negotiation. In this volume, leading experts present a comprehensive set of analyses of the U.S.-EU agricultural trade conflict. The discussions provide a unique perspective on the U.S.-EU agricultural trade confrontation in recent years and offer insights into both the final GATT agreement and forthcoming agricultural issues. Presenting a broad historical context, the book focuses on changes in U.S. and European trade and agricultural policies, looking at the implications of these changes for bilateral relations and global agricultural markets. Providing U.S., EU, and third-party perspectives, the contributors analyze the negotiation process in the Uruguay Round of the GATT. Finally, the book explores several additional dimensions of the U.S.-EU agricultural trade conflict, including the consequences of the EU integration and enlargement processes, the environmental impact of the Union’s agricultural policies, and the mechanisms and forces that determine agricultural policy formation in both the United States and in Europe.

Trade in temperate zone farm products between the developed countries has been beset with problems since the GATT's inception in 1947. The basic problem was always that the conditions in world agricultural markets were distorted by the national agricultural policies followed by all developed countries - policies which national authorities were reluctant to adapt to conform with the requirements of a liberal international trading system for agricultural products. This book describes and analyses the attempts that were made to make trade in agriculture less distorted, more stable and predictable, and less of a dangerous source of political friction between nations, in successive rounds of negotiations under the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade in the 45-year period from GATT's inception in 1947 to the end of the Uruguay Round in 1993. While the book analyses the development of international trade policy throughout the post-war period, particular attention is given to the Kennedy, Tokyo and Uruguay Rounds of GATT negotiations in which the problems of trade in agricultural products were confronted.

Provides a context for understanding the agricultural aspects of the GATT, the CAP, and EC-U.S. relations

Since the establishment of the WTO, there have been significant changes in the legal and institutional landscape of many developing countries. Whatever the motivation for trade-related legal reform, our experience in the FAO Legal Office has been that besides the substantial costs involved, there are many challenges to successful and meaningful legal and institutional reforms. Legal drafters must therefore be well aware of the existing legal and administrative culture. They must also have a realistic appreciation of the resource constraints in the country, for inadequate resources certainly restrict the ability of implementing bodies to put new rules into practice. This study is about the nature and extent of these trade-related legal and institutional reforms with a particular focus on those of direct relevance to the agricultural sector. In addition to the sectoral focus on agriculture, the study places distinct emphasis on the challenges of developing countries in the implementation of trade-related international obligations in the agricultural sector. It derives from FAO's experience in advising countries on the implementation of agriculture-related WTO agreements, key elements of which are discussed and illustrated by three representative case studies.

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).