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Uruguay Round

TheWorld Trade Organization conducts negotiations through what are called rounds. The Uruguay Round

commenced in September1986and continued until April1994. The Round, based on the GATTministerial

meeting in Geneva (1982), was launched in Punta del Este in Uruguay(hence the name), followed by

negotiations in Montreal, Geneva,Brussels, Washington, D.C., and Tokyo, with the 20 agreements finally

being signed inMarrakech - theMarrakesh Agreement. The Round transformed the General Agreement on

Tariffs and Trade (GATT) into the World Trade Organization(WTO).

See the Doha Round for the following round.

[edit] Goals

The main objectives of the Uruguay Round were:

to reduceagricultural subsidies

to put restrictions on foreign investment, and

to begin the process of opening trade in services likebanking and insurance.

They also wanted to draft a code to deal with copyright violation and other forms ofintellectual property rights.

[edit] Background

The 1982 Ministerial Declaration identified problems including structural deficiencies, spill-over impacts of

certain countries' policies on world trade GATT could not manage. To address these issues, the eighth GATT

round (known as the Uruguay Round) was launched in September 1986, in Punta del Este,Uruguay.[1] It was

the biggest negotiating mandate on trade ever agreed: the talks were going to extend the trading system into

several new areas, notably trade in services and intellectual property, and to reform trade in the sensitive

sectors of agriculture and textiles; all the original GATT articles were up for review.[2]

The round was supposed to end in December 1990, but the US and EU disagreed on how to reform

agricultural trade and decided to extend the talks.[3]Finally, In November 1992, the US and EU settled most of

their differences in a deal known informally as "the Blair House accord", and onApril 15, 1994, the deal was

signed by ministers from most of the 123 participating governments at a meeting in Marrakesh, Morocco.[4]The

agreement established the World Trade Organization, which came into being upon its entry into force on

January 1,1995, to replace the GATT system.[2]It is widely regarded as the most profound institutional reform

of the world trading system since the GATT's establishment.[5]

[edit] Achievements

The GATT still exists as the WTO's umbrella treaty for trade in goods, updated as a result of the Uruguay

Round negotiations (a distinction is made between GATT 1994, the updated parts of GATT, and GATT 1947,

the original agreement which is still the heart of GATT 1994).[6] The GATT 1994 is not however the only legally

binding agreement included in the Final Act; a long list of about 60 agreements, annexes, decisions and

understandings was adopted. In fact, the agreements fall into a simple structure with six main parts:

an umbrella agreement (the Agreement Establishing the WTO);

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uguay_Round#cite_note-3%23cite_note-3http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_Trade_Organizationhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/January_1http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1995http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uruguay_Round#cite_note-UR-1%23cite_note-UR-1http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uruguay_Round#cite_note-4%23cite_note-4http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Uruguay_Round&action=edit&section=3http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uruguay_Round#cite_note-G4-5%23cite_note-G4-5

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agreements for each of the three broad areas of trade that the WTO covers: goods and investment (the

Multilateral Agreements on Trade in Goods including the GATT 1994 and the TRIMS), services (GATS), and

intellectual property (TRIPS);

dispute settlement (DSU); and

reviews of governments' trade policies (TPRM).[7]

[edit] Criticism

Groups such as Oxfam have criticized the Uruguay Round for paying insufficient attention to the special needs

ofdeveloping countries. One aspect of this criticism is that figures very close to rich country industries such

as formerCargill executive Dan Amstutz had a major role in the drafting of Uruguay Round language on

agricultureand other matters. As with theWTO in general, NGOs such as Health Gapand Global Trade Watch

also criticize what was negotiated in the Round on intellectual property and industrial tariffs as setting up too

many constraints on policy-making and human needs.

The Uruguay Round

It took seven and a half years, almost twice the original schedule. By the end, 125 countries were taking

part. It covered almost all trade, from toothbrushes to pleasure boats, from banking to telecommunications,

from the genes of wild rice to AIDS treatments.

It was quite simply the largest trade negotiation ever, and most probably the largest negotiation of any kind

in history.

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At times it seemed doomed to fail. But in the end, the Uruguay Round brought about the biggest reformof the worlds trading system since GATT was created at the end of the Second World War. And yet,despite its troubled progress, the Uruguay Round did see some early results. Within only two years,participants had agreed on a package of cuts in import duties on tropical products which are mainlyexported by developing countries. They had also revised the rules for settling disputes, with somemeasures implemented on the spot. And they called for regular reports on GATT members trade

policies, a move considered important for making trade regimes transparent around the world.

A round to end all rounds? back to top

The seeds of the Uruguay Round were sown in November 1982 at a ministerial meeting of GATT

members in Geneva. Although the ministers intended to launch a major new negotiation, the

conference stalled on the issue of agriculture and was widely regarded as a failure. In fact, the work

programme that the ministers agreed formed the basis for what was to become the Uruguay Round

negotiating agenda.

Nevertheless, it took four more years of exploring, clarifying issues and painstaking consensus-building,

before ministers agreed to launch the new round. They did so in September 1986, in Punta del Este,

Uruguay. They eventually accepted a negotiating agenda which covered virtually every outstanding

trade policy issue. The talks were going to extend the trading system into several new areas, notably

trade in services and intellectual property, and to reform trade in the sensitive sectors of agriculture

and textiles. All the original GATT articles were up for review. It was the biggest negotiating mandate

on trade ever agreed, and the ministers gave themselves four years to complete it.

Two years later, in December 1988, ministers met again in Montreal, Canada for what was supposed to

be an assessment of progress at the rounds half-way point. The purpose was to clarify the agenda for

the remaining two years, but the talks ended in a deadlock that was not resolved until officials met

more quietly in Geneva the following April.

Despite the difficulty, during the Montreal meeting, ministers did agree a package of early results.

These included some concessions on market access for tropical products aimed at assisting

developing countries as well as a streamlined dispute settlement system, and the Trade Policy

Review Mechanism which provided for the first comprehensive, systematic and regular reviews of

national trade policies and practices of GATT members. The round was supposed to end when ministers

met once more in Brussels, in December 1990. But they disagreed on how to reform agricultural trade

and decided to extend the talks. The Uruguay Round entered its bleakest period.

Despite the poor political outlook, a considerable amount of technical work continued, leading to the

first draft of a final legal agreement. This draft Final Act was compiled by the then GATT director

general, Mr Arthur Dunkel, who chaired the negotiations at officials level. It was put on the table in

Geneva in December 1991. The text fulfilled every part of the Punta del Este mandate, with one

exception it did not contain the participating countries lists of commitments for cutting import

duties and opening their services markets. The draft became the basis for the final agreement.

For the following two years, the negotiations lurched between impending failure, to predictions of

imminent success. Several deadlines came and went. New points of major conflict emerged to join

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agriculture: services, market access, anti-dumping rules, and the proposed creation of a new

institution. Differences between the United States and European Communities (EU) became central to

hopes for a final, successful conclusion.

In November 1992, the US and EU settled most of their differences on agriculture in a deal known

informally as the Blair House accord. By July 1993 the Quad (US, EU, Japan and Canada)

announced significant progress in negotiations on tariffs and related subjects (market access). It took

until 15 December 1993 for every issue to be finally resolved and for negotiations on market access for

goods and services to be concluded (although some final touches were completed in talks on market

access a few weeks later). On 15 April 1994, the deal was signed by ministers from most of the 125

participating governments at a meeting in Marrakesh, Morocco.

The delay had some merits. It allowed some negotiations to progress further than would have been

possible in 1990: for example some aspects of services and intellectual property, and the creation of

the WTO itself. But the task had been immense, and negotiation-fatigue was felt in trade bureaucracies

around the world. The difficulty of reaching agreement on a complete package containing almost the

entire range of current trade issues led some to conclude that a negotiation on this scale would never

again be possible. Yet, the Uruguay Round agreements contain timetables for new negotiations on a

number of topics. And by 1996, some countries were openly calling for a new round early in the next

century. The response was mixed; but the Marrakesh agreement does already include commitments to

reopen negotiations on a range of subjects at the turn of the century

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