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Why GATT's Uruguay Round Must Succeed
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17158 |
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CURRENT ISSUES
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12 / 1990 |
1,901 Words |
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Carla A. Hills
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Saddam Hussein has painfully reminded us that we live in a perilous world where in a single day the global political and economic order can be dramatically disrupted.
His ruthless invasion of Kuwait and continued menacing of the Middle East destroyed lives, upset world markets, and squandered resources. His piracy dimmed the glow of international harmony we have enjoyed in this first year of the post-Cold War era.
The swift international condemnation of Iraq's aggression and the deployment of a multinational force to thwart Hussein's imperial ambitions underscore the importance of a strong global partnership among civilized nations - a partnership in which nations act in concert to achieve together a world order that they cannot achieve alone.
Since the Cold War thaw, President Bush has vigorously encouraged international collaboration to achieve political and economic stability. He has promoted it not only to contain this recent military aggression but also to build a strengthened global trading system that will permit trade to expand and thereby increase world prosperity and stability.
The president understands that trade drives the growth of the global economy. That is why he made the successful completion of the Uruguay Round of global trade talks by December his top trade priority. And that is why he put these talks at the top of his agenda at the Houston economic summit in July.
The Uruguay round of talks was launched in 1986 in Punta del Este, Uruguay - hence the name. They involve nearly 100 nations representing more than 85 percent of world trade and are being held under the auspices of the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade. GATT, as it is called, is without doubt the world's most important trade agreement - indeed, it is the "Constitution of World Trade."
GATT started out small after World War II with just a handful of nations looking for a way to spur the rapid economic growth needed to recover from the devastation wrought by the war. It succeeded beyond all expectations.
Under GATT sponsorship, the world's trading nations have held seven successful rounds of negotiations in which tariff rates were slashed by more than 75 percent. As a result of this international collaboration, trade has exploded from just $60 billion in 1950 to nearly $4 trillion today.
This enormous expansion in global commerce has fueled a spectacular surge of the world and U.S. economies. Both have grown faster in the last 40 years than in any four decades of world history. As a result, we have enjoyed unparalleled global prosperity.
GATT has opened new markets for business, increased choices and lowered prices for consumers, and led to higher incomes and more jobs for workers.
Need For Trade Reform
Perhaps precisely because of this phenomenal success, world trade has outgrown, or grown beyond, these rules that served it so well for so long. Areas
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