Abstract
Towards the end of World War II, many of the world’s most expert officials on commercial and monetary affairs, with many of the most highly qualified academics in the field, were engaged on a new and challenging exercise, the deliberate planning of institutional arrangements that would together constitute a viable framework for the re-establishment of a liberal international system of trade and payments. The Bretton Woods negotiations, as they were called, after the location of the exercise in the United States, produced two institutions. The International Monetary Fund (IMF) was established as a means of improving the system of payments and currencies. In order to augment the flow of capital from rich to poor countries, there was also established the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development (IBRD), otherwise known as the World Bank Almost concurrently, negotiations in Geneva produced, in place of the originally intended International Trade Organisation, the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) as an instrument for pursuing the liberalisation of world trade.1
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Notes
For authoritative accounts of the development of the post-war system of international trade and payments, see Richard N. Gardner, Sterling-Dollar Diplomacy: Anglo-American Collaboration in the Reconstruction of Multilateral Trade (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1956)
and Gerard Curzon, Multilateral Commercial Diplomacy (London: Michael Joseph, 1965).
Also see Karin Koch, International Trade Policy and the GATT 1947–67 (Stockholm: Almqvist & Wiksell, 1969) and
Kenneth W. Dam, The GATT Law and International Economic Organisation (Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 1970).
The results of the Kennedy Round negotiations are analysed in Ernest Preeg, Traders and Diplomats (Washington: Brookings Institution, 1970).
For an American critique of the United States Administration’s measures of August is, 1971, see C. Fred Bergsten, “The New Economics and U.S. Foreign Policy”, Foreign Affairs New York, January, 1972. Also see Dr. Bergsten’s article, “Crisis in U.S. Trade Policy”, in the July, 1971, issue of the same journal.
A statement of the Administration’s position can be found in Peter G. Peterson, A Foreign Economic Perspective (Washington: Council on International Economic Policy, Executive Office of the President, 1971).
Cf. Theodore Geiger, “Toward a World of Trade Blocks”, The Atlantic Community Quarterly Washington, Winter, 1971–72. The analysis is elaborated upon in
Geiger, Transatlantic Relations in the Prospect of an Enlarged European Community (London, Washington and Montreal: British-North American Committee, 1971).
See, for instance, the work of the International Chamber of Commerce, based on a report by Jean Royer, The Liberalisation of International Trade during the Next Decade (Paris: International Chamber of Commerce, 1969).
Among the most notable reports in the United States have been the Presidential Commission on International Trade and Investment Policy, United States International Economic Policy in an Interdependent World, Williams Report (Washington: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1971);
US Foreign Economic Policy for the 1970s: a New Approach to New Realities a Policy Report by an Advisory Committee (Washington: National Planning Association); and The United States and the European Community: Policies for a Changing World (New York: Committee for Economic Development, 1971).
Also see the report of a conference of economists jointly sponsored by the Institut de la Communauté Européene pour les Etudes Universitaires, Brussels, the Japan Economic Research Centre and the Brookings Institution that was published as Bergsten et al., Reshaping the International Economic Order (Washington: Brookings Institution, 1971).
For a fuller discussion, if in general terms, of how non-tariff barriers to trade might be broached in a multilateral negotiation, see Chapter 6 below. An economic analysis of certain of the principal non-tariff measures can be found in Brian Hindley, Britain’s Position on Nontariff Protection Thames Essay No. 4 (London: Trade Policy Research Centre, 1972).
In addition, see Robert E. Baldwin, Non-tariff Distortions of International Trade (Washington: Brookings Institution, 1971).
Some interesting proposals on how adherence to rules of competition might be secured are contained in Gerard and Victoria Curzon, Global Assault on Non-tariff Trade Barriers Thames Essay No. 3 (London: Trade Policy Research Centre, 1972), pp. 5–10.
With this objective in mind, emphasis is put on the role that might be played by regional development policies in the European Community, to provide off-farm employment in rural areas, in all the three contributions to Hermann Priebe, Denis Bergmann and Jan Honing, Fields of Conflict in European Farm Policy Agricultural Trade Paper No. 3 (London: Trade Policy Research Centre, 1972). Increasing emphasis is also being put on “rural development” policies in the United States: see
Don Paarlberg, “Farm Programmes: the American Experience”, an Address to the Trade Policy Research Centre, London, February 28, 1972.
This is demonstrated statistically in a major income-distribution analysis of farm-support programmes in the United Kingdom in T. E. Josling and Donna Hamway, “Distribution of Costs and Benefits of Farm Policy”, in Josling et al., Burdens and Benefits of Farm-Support Policies, Agricultural Trade Paper No. 1 (London: Trade Policy Research Centre, 1972), pp. 50–85.
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Advisory Group. (1972). Proposals for Future Trade Strategy. In: Towards an Open World Economy. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-01712-6_1
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