Suchergebnisse

MANY governments think they could not secure the support of domestic producer interests for the trade-liberalizing agreements they negotiate with other countries without provisions in them that permit a degree of flexibility in implementing the core obligations they undertake in the event of unforeseeable or even foreseeable problems. 1 Thus in the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) there are "escape clauses" that, as exceptio ns to the rules, allow members to exceed their tariff bindings and impose import restrictions that would otherwise violate GATT articles.2 The result is a constant tension between the rules drawn to permit limited exceptions to general GATT obligations and constant pressures in member countries of the World Trade Organization (WTO) to expand the escape clauses to provide protection to politically powerful constituencies - often without much regard for the limits within the GATT - in the other direction. General GATT obligations include Articles I, II, II and XI. Politics dictate the pressures that predominate, but, to ensure that protectionist pressures do not gain excessively, the different escape clauses in the WTO must be narrowly defined. They are justified in various ways. There is little or no coordination or consistency left, however, between the terms under which they are applicable, given all the changes that have taken place with the rapid integration of the world economy since the GATT came into being in 1948.

MANY governments think they could not secure the support of domestic producer interests for the trade-liberalizing agreements they negotiate with other countries without provisions in them that permit a degree of flexibility in implementing the core obligations they undertake in the event of unforeseeable or even foreseeable problems. 1 Thus in the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) there are "escape clauses" that, as exceptio ns to the rules, allow members to exceed their tariff bindings and impose import restrictions that would otherwise violate GATT articles.2 The result is a constant tension between the rules drawn to permit limited exceptions to general GATT obligations and constant pressures in member countries of the World Trade Organization (WTO) to expand the escape clauses to provide protection to politically powerful constituencies - often without much regard for the limits within the GATT - in the other direction. General GATT obligations include Articles I, II, II and XI. Politics dictate the pressures that predominate, but, to ensure that protectionist pressures do not gain excessively, the different escape clauses in the WTO must be narrowly defined. They are justified in various ways. There is little or no coordination or consistency left, however, between the terms under which they are applicable, given all the changes that have taken place with the rapid integration of the world economy since the GATT came into being in 1948.

We consider the design and implementation of international trade agreements when: (i) negotiations are undertaken and commitments made in the presence of uncertainty about future political pressures; (ii) governments possess private information about political pressures at the time that the agreement is actually implemented; and (iii) negotiated commitments can be implemented only if they are self-enforcing. We thus consider the design of self-enforcing trade agreements among governments that acquire private information over time. In this context, we provide equilibrium interpretations of GATT/WTO negotiations regarding upper bounds on applied tariffs and GATT/WTO escape clauses. We also provide a novel interpretation of a feature of the WTO Safeguard Agreement, under which escape clause actions cannot be re-imposed in an industry for a period equal to the duration of the most recent escape clause action. We find that a dynamic usage constraint of this kind can raise the expected welfare of negotiating governments.