国贸第六章.doc

Chapter 6 GATT and WTO
GATT
A Brief History of GATT
The WTO’s predecessor, the GATT, was established on a provisional basis after the Second World War in the wake of other new multilateral institutions dedicated to international economic cooperation -- notably the "Bretton Woods" institutions now known as the World Bank and the International ary Fund.
The original 23 GATT countries were among over 50 which agreed a draft Charter for an International anization (ITO) -- a new specialized agency of the United Nations. The Charter was intended to provide not only world trade disciplines but also contained rules relating to employment, commodity agreements, restrictive business practices, international investment and services.
In an effort to give an early boost to trade liberalization after the World War II and to begin to correct the large overhang of protectionist measures which remained in place from the early 1930s -- tariff negotiations were opened among the 23 founding GATT " contracting parties" in 1946. This first round of negotiations resulted in 45,000 tariff concessions affecting $10 billion -- or about one-fifth -- of world trade. It was also agreed that the value of these concessions should be protected by early -- and largely "provisional" -- acceptance of some of the trade rules in the draft ITO Charter. The tariff concessions and rules together became known as the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade and entered into force in January 1948.
Although the ITO Charter was finally agreed at a UN Conference on Trade and Employment in Havana in March 1948, ratification in national legislatures proved impossible in some cases. When the United States' government announced, in 1950, that it would not seek congressional ratification of the Havana Charter, the ITO was effectively dead. Despite its provisional nature, the GATT remained the only multilateral instrument governing international trade from 1948 until the establishment of the WTO.
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