Reference no: EM132258701

Select 2(GATT and FTAA) treaties and indicate the advantages that participating countries have in them.

GATT.

General Agreement on Tarifs and Trade.

It is a treaty signed at the Tariff Conference of Geneva in 1947 by the representatives of 23 non-communist countries. The main achievement of this agreement was the creation of an international forum dedicated to the increase of multilateral trade and the resolution of international commercial conflicts. This agreement replaced a proposal to create a United Nations International Trade Organization that was not formed due to the tensions generated by the Cold War.

The GATT came into force in January 1948, and gradually more countries joined. In 1988, 96 countries, which accounted for most of the international trade, belonged to the GATT, while others had particular agreements including de facto accessions to the treaty. The members of the GATT have carried out, since 1947, eight tariff conferences, called 'rounds'. The seventh round, known as the Tokyo Round, ended in 1979. The eighth tariff conference, called the Uruguay Round, began in late 1986 and was closed in 1994, with an agreement that included the substitution of GATT by the World Trade Organization ( WTO) as of January 1, 1995.

GATT members studied and proposed measures that would minimize trade barriers, both new and existing ones, including the reduction of import tariffs, as well as import quotas, abolishing preferential trade agreements among member countries. The tariff concessions were negotiated under the principle of reciprocity.

A tariff concession for a given product applied to all contracting parties, although a safeguard clause could be requested to withdraw an initial concession in the event that the tariff reduction caused serious problems to the domestic industry.

One of the fundamental characteristics of the GATT is the principle of non-commercial discrimination among the member countries. All countries adhering to the GATT agreed to a most favored nation policy among all members.

The member nations agreed to treat all the other members in the same way. All tariffs, reduced or not, were included in this policy. The GATT members pursued, in theory, the abolition of all non-tariff protectionist barriers.

The first suppression attempt; These barriers were carried out during the Kennedy Round talks (1964-1967). During the Tokyo and Uruguay rounds, the need to reduce these barriers was reiterated.

The first important reforms of the Treaty were ratified in 1955. The member countries agreed to take more severe measures with respect to export subsidies and the limitation of imports. During the 1960s, the GATT was reformed again in order to reflect the growing interest that developed countries had in regard to the trade problems of the least developed countries. Thanks to these reforms, the most developed countries were not bound by the principle of reciprocity to correspond to the tariff concessions made by other members. In the Uruguay Round, the most important reform was carried out: the substitution of GATT by the WTO.

Although it was created to replace the GATT, the WTO incorporates all the measures of the original treaty and the subsequent reforms, revised and improved, called GATT 1994. The WTO extends the GATT mandate to new areas, such as trade in services and property. intellectual, and provides a legal framework at the international level to strengthen GATT measures. Since the WTO develops the Final Act of the Uruguay Round, it is, in fact, perpetuating GATT organization and decisions under a new reinforced structure. In fact, the GATT itself was no more than an interim treaty administered by an improvised secretariat, but it has been effectively transformed into an international organization with full powers.

Treaty of GATT (1947) and paragraphs that comprise it.

As I commented from the beginning it is very difficult to cover in a single work all the topics that make up each of these organisms, so I will only name the most important articles and paragraphs contained in this treatise.

The FTAA

Efforts to unite the economies of the Americas into a single free trade area were initiated at the Summit of the Americas, which took place in Miami, USA, in December 1994. The Heads of State and Government of the 34 The region's democracies agreed to create a Free Trade Area of ??the Americas, or FTAA, in which barriers to trade and investment will be progressively eliminated. They also resolved that the negotiations with a view to reaching an agreement would end no later than 2005 and that they would achieve substantial progress in establishing the FTAA by the year 2000.

The Heads of State and Government also instructed their Ministers responsible for trade to adopt a series of concrete initial measures for the creation of the Free Trade Area of ??the Americas. Your decisions regarding these measures are found in the Declaration of Principles and the Plan of Action of the Miami Summit.

During the preparatory phase (1994-1998), the 34 Ministers responsible for trade established twelve working groups to identify and analyze existing measures related to trade in each area, with a view to identifying possible approaches for negotiations. The results of the preparatory work of the Groups were made available to the public. Four ministerial meetings were held during the preparatory phase: the first took place in June 1995 in Denver, USA; the second in March 1996 in Cartagena, Colombia; the third in May 1997 in Bello Horizonte, Brazil and the fourth in March 1998 in San José, Costa Rica.

In the San José Declaration, the Ministers determined the structure of the negotiations and agreed on the general principles and objectives that guide these negotiations and recommended to their Heads of State and Government that the formal FTAA negotiations be initiated. The general principles and objectives agreed upon by the Ministers are listed in Annex I of the Declaration.

The FTAA negotiations formally began in April 1998 during the Second Summit of the Americas in Santiago, Chile. The Heads of State and Government that participated in the Second Summit of the Americas agreed that the FTAA negotiation process would be balanced, comprehensive, congruent with the WTO, and constitute a single undertaking.

They also agreed that the negotiation process will be transparent and will take into account the differences in the levels of development and size of the economies of the Americas in order to facilitate the full participation of all countries. They also agreed that the negotiations should move forward in order to contribute to raising the standard of living, improving the working conditions of all the peoples of the Americas, and better protecting the environment. Finally, they agreed on a structure according to which the negotiations would take place.

PROGRESS OF NEGOTIATIONS

The fifth Ministerial Meeting - the first since the formal start of negotiations - was held in Toronto in November 1999. At this meeting, the Ministers instructed the negotiating groups to draft a text of their respective chapters and present it at the sixth Ministerial Meeting. The negotiation groups responsible for issues related to market access were instructed to discuss the modalities and procedures for negotiations in their respective areas.

The Ministers also approved several business facilitation measures, designed to facilitate commercial exchange in the hemisphere. These measures, which are included in the Annexes to the Ministerial Declaration, focus on areas related to customs procedures and increased transparency.

At the sixth Ministerial Meeting, held in Buenos Aires in April 2001, a series of fundamental decisions were adopted for the FTAA negotiation process.

The Ministers received from the negotiating groups draft text of the FTAA Agreement and, in an unprecedented decision aimed at increasing the transparency of the process, agreed to make this text public. The Technical Committee on Institutional Affairs was created to consider the general structure of an FTAA Agreement (general and institutional matters).

The Ministers also highlighted the need to promote dialogue with civil society, and instructed the Committee of Government Representatives on the Participation of Civil Society to send to the Negotiating Groups the contributions presented by civil society in response to the Public Invitation, referred to their respective thematic areas and those related to the FTAA process in general. The ministers reiterated the importance of providing technical assistance to the smaller economies in order to facilitate their participation in the FTAA.