Dismantling Protectionism: The Political Economy of Liberalisation in the Uruguay Round

Abstract

By the end of the Uruguay Round, some form or other of exceptional, protectionist trade regime for textile and clothing products had been in place for nearly forty years. This had started with unilateral American restrictions against Japan in the mid 1950s, but had grown into a fully legitimated GATT-based accord restricting imports of textile and clothing products from the world’s (often poorest) developing countries to the most advanced industrialised economies. This arrangement was forged from the common interests of producer firms and their associations, integrated into the trade policy processes across a range of influential and wealthy GATT member states. State and market actors together forged the structure of the market for these products in the industrialised countries. These state and market actors, integrated into the global trade policy process, and were largely united in their pursuit of an increasingly restrictive MFA, despite their declaratory posture on the ‘temporary’ nature of the accord. By 1986, at the launch of the Uruguay Round, this transnational capture of the global textile and clothing trade regime appeared as entrenched as ever. Entrenched interests with substantial and institutionalised political resources are difficult to dislodge.