FIFTIETH ANNIVERSARY OF THE MULTILATERAL

TRADING SYSTEM

The Multilateral Trading System celebrates its fiftieth anniversary in 1998. The achievements of the system are
well worth celebrating. Since the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade began operating from Geneva in 1948,
world merchandise trade has increased 16 fold and is forecasted to increase 22-fold by 1998. World trade now
grows roughly three times faster than merchandise output. Global exports of goods and services are currently
worth more than $6 trillion.

Once a system involving 23 countries primarily concerned with cutting tariffs, the multilateral trading system
now encompasses 128 member nations dealing with virtually all manner of global commerce, including trade in
services, textiles, agriculture and the international rule for the protection of patents, trademarks and copyrights.

This advance ranks among the great international economic achievements of the post-world war era. The
anniversary offers an opportunity both to look back on the achievements of GATT and the World Trade
Organization, and to look ahead and examine ways in which the organization can adapt to the challenges of the
twenty-first century.

What follows is a brief history of the highlights of GATT/WTO.

WTO/GATT - CHRONOLOGY OF ACHIEVEMENTS

1947 The birth of GATT. On 30 October 1947, the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) was
signed by 23 nations at the Palais des Nations in Geneva. The Agreement contained tariff concessions agreed to
during the first multilateral trade negotiations and a set of rules designed to prevent these concessions from being
frustrated by restrictive trade measures.

The 23 founding contracting parties were members of the Preparatory Committee established by the United
Nations Economic and Social Council in 1946 to draft the charter of the International Trade Organization (ITO).
The ITO was envisaged as the final leg of a triad of post-War economic agencies (the other two were the
International Monetary Fund and the International Bank for Reconstruction - later the World Bank).

In parallel with this task, the Committee members decided to negotiate tariff concessions among themselves.
From April to October 1947, the participants completed some 123 negotiations and established 20 schedules
containing the tariff reductions and bindings which became an integral part of GATT. These schedules resulting
from the first Round covered some 45,000 tariff concessions and about $10 billion in trade.

GATT was conceived as an interim measure that put into effect the commercial-policy provisions of the ITO. In
November, delegations from 56 countries met in Havana, Cuba, to consider the ITO draft as a whole. After long
and difficult negotiations, some 53 countries signed the Final Act authenticating the text of the Havana Charter
in March 1948. There was no commitment, however, from governments to ratification and, in the end, the ITO
was stillborn, leaving GATT as the only international instrument governing the conduct of world trade.

1948 Entry into force. On 1 January 1948, GATT entered into force. The 23 founding members were: Australia,
Belgium, Brazil, Burma, Canada, Ceylon, Chile, China, Cuba, Czechoslovakia, France, India, Lebanon,
Luxembourg, Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Pakistan, Southern Rhodesia, Syria, South Africa, United
Kingdom and the United States. The first Session of the Contracting Parties was held from February to March in
Havana, Cuba. The secretariat of the Interim Commission for the ITO, which served as the ad hoc secretariat of
GATT, moved from Lake Placid, New York, to Geneva. The Contracting Parties held their second session in
Geneva from August to September.
1949 Second Round at Annecy. During the second Round of trade negotiations, held from April to August at
Annecy, France, the contracting parties exchanged some 5,000 tariff concessions. At their third Session, they also
dealt with the accession of ten more countries.

1950 Third Round at Torquay. From September 1950 to April 1951, the contracting parties exchanged some
8,700 tariff concessions in the English town, yielding tariff reductions of about 25 per cent in relation to the 1948
level. Four more countries acceded to GATT. During the fifth Session of the Contracting Parties, the United States
indicated that the ITO Charter would not be re-submitted to the US Congress; this, in effect, meant that ITO
would not come into operation.

1956 Fourth Round at Geneva. The fourth Round was completed in May and produced some $2.5 billion worth
of tariff reductions. At the beginning of the year, the GATT commercial policy course for officials of developing
countries was inaugurated.

1958 The Haberler Report. GATT published Trends in International Trade in October. Known as the
"Haberler Report" in honour of Professor Gottfried Haberler, the chairman of the panel of eminent economists, it
provided initial guidelines for the work of GATT. The Contracting Parties at their 13th Sessions, attended by
Ministers, subsequently established three committees in GATT: Committee I to convene a further tariff
negotiating conference; Committee II to review the agricultural policies of member governments and Committee
III to tackle the problems facing developing countries in their trade. The establishment of the European Economic
Community during the previous year also demanded large-scale tariff negotiations under Article XXIV:6 of the
General Agreement.

1960 The Dillon Round. The fifth Round opened in September and was divided into two phases: the first was
concerned with negotiations with EEC member states for the creation of a single schedule of concessions for the
Community based on its Common External Tariff; and the second was a further general round of tariff
negotiations. Named in honour of US Under- Secretary of State Douglas Dillon who proposed the negotiations,
the Round was concluded in July 1962 and resulted in about 4,400 tariff concessions covering $4.9 billion of
trade.

1961 The Short-Term Arrangement covering cotton textiles was agreed as an exception to the GATT rules.
The arrangement permitted the negotiation of quota restrictions affecting the exports of cotton-producing
countries. In 1962 the "Short-term" Arrangement became the "Long-term" Arrangement, lasting until 1974 when
the Multifibre Arrangement entered into force.

1964 The Kennedy Round. Meeting at Ministerial level, a Trade Negotiations Committee formally opened the
Kennedy Round in May. In June 1967, the Round's Final Act was signed by some 50 participating countries
which together accounted for 75 per cent of world trade. For the first time, negotiations departed from the product-
by-product approach used in the previous Rounds to an across-the-board or linear method of cutting tariffs for
industrial goods. The working hypothesis of a 50 per cent target cut in tariff levels was achieved in many areas.
Concessions covered an estimated total value of trade of about $40 billion. Separate agreements were reached on
grains, chemical products and a Code on Anti-Dumping.

1965 A New Chapter. The early 1960s marked the accession to the General Agreement of many newly-
independent developing countries. In February, the Contracting Parties, meeting in a special session, adopted the
text of Part IV on Trade and Development. The additional chapter to the GATT required developed countries to
accord high priority to the reduction of trade barriers to products of developing countries. A Committee on Trade
and Development was established to oversee the functioning of the new GATT provisions. In the preceding year,
GATT had established the International Trade Centre (ITC) to help developing countries in trade promotion and
identification of potential markets. Since 1968, the ITC has been jointly operated by GATT and the UN
Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD).
1973 The Tokyo Round. The seventh Round was launched by Ministers in September at the Japanese capital.
Some 99 countries participated in negotiating a comprehensive body of agreements covering both tariff and non-
tariff matters. At the end of the Round in November 1979, participants exchanged tariff reductions and bindings
which covered more than $300 billion of trade. As a result of these cuts, the weighted average tariff on
manufactured goods in the world's nine major industrial markets declined from 7.0 to 4.7 per cent. Agreements
were reached in the following areas: subsidies and countervailing measures, technical barriers to trade, import
licensing procedures, government procurement, customs valuation, a revised anti-dumping code, trade in bovine
meat, trade in dairy products and trade in civil aircraft. The first concrete result of the Round was the reduction
of import duties and other trade barriers by industrial countries on tropical products exported by developing
countries.

1974 On 1 January 1974, the Arrangement Regarding International Trade in Textiles, otherwise known as
the Multifibre Arrangement (MFA), entered into force. It superseded the arrangements that had been governing
trade in cotton textiles since 1961. The MFA seeks to promote the expansion and progressive liberalization of
trade in textile products while at the same time avoiding disruptive effects in individual markets and lines of
production. The MFA was extended in 1978, 1982, 1986, 1991 and 1992. MFA members account for most of the
world exports of textiles and clothing which in 1986 amounted to US$128 billion.

1982 Ministerial Meeting. Meeting for the first time in nearly ten years, the GATT Ministers in November at
Geneva reaffirmed the validity of GATT rules for the conduct of international trade and committed themselves
to combating protectionist pressures. They also established a wide-ranging work programme for the GATT which
was to lay down the groundwork for a new Round.

1986 The Uruguay Round. GATT Trade Ministers meeting at Punta del Este, Uruguay, launched the eighth
Round of trade negotiations on 20 September. The Punta del Este Declaration, while representing a single political
undertaking, was divided into two sections. The first covered negotiations on trade in goods and the second
initiated negotiations on trade in services. In the area of trade in goods, the Ministers committed themselves to a
"standstill" on new trade measures inconsistent with their GATT obligations and to a "rollback" programme aimed
at phasing out existing inconsistent measures. Envisaged to last four years, negotiations started in early February
1987 in the following areas: tariffs, non-tariff measures, tropical products, natural resource-based products,
textiles and clothing, agriculture, subsidies, safeguards, trade-related aspects of intellectual property rights
including trade in counterfeit goods, and trade-related investment measures. The work of other groups included a
review of GATT articles, the GATT dispute-settlement procedure, the Tokyo Round agreements, as well as the
functioning of the GATT system as a whole.

1993 15 December, Successful Conclusion of the Uruguay Round.

1994 15 April, Signing of the Uruguay Round Agreements in Marrakesh.

"GATT 1994" is the updated version of GATT 1947 and takes into account the substantive changes negotiated
in the Uruguay Round. GATT 1994 is an integral part of the World Trade Organization established on 1 January
1995. It was agreed that there be a one-year transition period during which certain GATT 1947 bodies and
commitments would co-exist with those of the World Trade Organization.

Establishment of a Preparatory Committee for the WTO, under the Chairmanship of Mr. Peter Sutherland,
with the overall responsibility for preparing the groundwork for a smooth transition from GATT to the WTO.

In the "Headquarters Agreement", Members decide to locate the WTO in Geneva.

1995 1st January, establishment of the World Trade Organization.

March, Mr. Renato Ruggiero is appointed Director-General of the World Trade Organization.
 November, establishment of the Appellate Body which hears appeals and reviews decisions of WTO dispute
panel cases.

1996 1 January 1996 - Agreement on Trade-related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS) enters
into force for developed countries

May, Basic Telecommunications negotiations are suspended until 1997 in spite of substantial offers.
Governments participating agree to preserve the offer and to re-examine them during a 30-day period beginning
15 January 1997.

The WTO Preshipment Inspection Body becomes operational. The WTO mechanism for settling disputes
between exporters and preshipment inspection companies - the Independent Entity (IE) - becomes operational.
The IE is constituted jointly by the WTO, the International Chamber of Commerce (ICC) and the International
Federation of Inspection Agencies (IFIA), and is administered by the WTO.

1996 July, negotiations on Maritime Transport Services are suspended until 2000. Members participating in
the negotiations agreed to suspend the negotiations and to resume them, on the basis of existing or improved
offers, at the time of the further round of comprehensive negotiations on trade in services mandated to begin in
the year 2000.

Financial Services accord. A substantial consensus is reached on a financial services agreement. Of some 76
WTO Members with commitments in the financial services sector, around 30 offered improvements in the
negotiations which led up to this agreement. An important missing partner to this deal is the United States.

In effect the agreement means that the best offers, with the exception of that of the United States, will be
implemented for an initial period up to November 1, 1997. At that point, Members will again have an opportunity
(during the following 60 days) to modify or improve their offers on financial services schedules and to take MFN
exemptions in the sector.

9-13 December, First World Trade Organization Ministerial Conference to be held in Singapore.

Philippines 27 December 1979

On 1 January 1995, the WTO replaced GATT, which had been in existence since 1947, as the organization
overseeing the multilateral trading system. The governments that had signed GATT were officially known
as “GATT contracting parties”. Upon signing the new WTO agreements (which include the updated GATT,
known as GATT 1994), they officially became known as “WTO members”.

The list below is historical. It contains the 128 GATT signatories as at the end of 1994, together with the dates
they signed the agreement.

The World Trade Organization (WTO) is the only global international organization dealing with
the rules of trade between nations. At its heart are the WTO agreements, negotiated and signed by
the bulk of the world’s trading nations and ratified in their parliaments. The goal is to ensure that
trade flows as smoothly, predictably and freely as possible.
The World Trade Organization — the WTO — is the international organization whose primary purpose is to open trade for the
benefit of all.

Who we are

There are a number of ways of looking at the World Trade Organization. It is an organization for trade opening.
It is a forum for governments to negotiate trade agreements. It is a place for them to settle trade disputes. It
operates a system of trade rules. Essentially, the WTO is a place where member governments try to sort out the
trade problems they face with each other.

What we do

The WTO is run by its member governments. All major decisions are made by the membership as a whole,
either by ministers (who usually meet at least once every two years) or by their ambassadors or delegates (who
meet regularly in Geneva).

What we stand for

The WTO agreements are lengthy and complex because they are legal texts covering a wide range of activities.
But a number of simple, fundamental principles run throughout all of these documents. These principles are the
foundation of the multilateral trading system.

The original member states of the World Trade Organization are the parties to
the GATT after ratifying the Uruguay Round Agreements,[1] and the European Communities. They obtained this
status at the entry into force on 1 January 1995 or upon their date of ratification. All other members have joined the
organization as a result of negotiation, and membership consists of a balance of rights and obligations.[2] The
process of becoming a World Trade Organization (WTO) member is unique to each applicant country, and the terms
of accession are dependent upon the country's stage of economic development and the current trade regime.[3]

An offer of accession is given once consensus is reached among members.[4] The process takes about five years,
on average, but it can take some countries almost a decade if the country is less than fully committed to the
process, or if political issues interfere. The shortest accession negotiation was that of Kyrgyzstan, lasting 2 years
and 10 months. The longest were that of Russia, lasting 19 years and 2 months,[5] Vanuatu, lasting 17 years and 1
month,[6] and China, lasting 15 years and 5 months.[7]

As of 2007, WTO member states represented 96.4% of global trade and 96.7% of global GDP.[8] Iran, followed
by Algeria, are the economies with the largest GDP and trade outside the WTO, using 2005 data.
E ver since ADAM SMITH published The Wealth of Nations in 1776, the vast majority
of economists have accepted the proposition that FREE TRADE among nations improves
overall economic welfare. Free trade, usually defined as the absence of tariffs, quotas, or
other governmental impediments to INTERNATIONAL TRADE, allows each country to
specialize in the goods it can produce cheaply and efficiently relative to other countries.
Such specialization enables all countries to achieve higher real incomes.

Although free trade provides overall benefits, removing a trade barrier on a particular good hurts
the shareholders and employees of the domestic industry that produces that good. Some of the
groups that are hurt by foreign COMPETITION wield enough political power to obtain protection
against imports. Consequently, barriers to trade continue to exist despite their sizable economic
costs. According to the U.S. International Trade Commission, for example, the U.S. gain from
removing trade restrictions on textiles and apparel would have been almost twelve billion dollars
in 2002 alone. This is a net economic gain after deducting the losses to firms and workers in the
domestic industry. Yet, domestic textile producers have been able to persuade Congress to
maintain tight restrictions on imports.

While virtually all economists think free trade is desirable, they differ on how best to make the
transition from tariffs and quotas to free trade. The three basic approaches to trade reform are
unilateral, multilateral, and bilateral.

Some countries, such as Britain in the nineteenth century and Chile and China in recent decades,
have undertaken unilateral tariff reductions—reductions made independently and without
reciprocal action by other countries. The advantage of unilateral free trade is that a country can
reap the benefits of free trade immediately. Countries that lower trade barriers by themselves do
not have to postpone reform while they try to persuade other nations to follow suit. The gains
from such trade liberalization are substantial: several studies have shown that income grows
more rapidly in countries open to international trade than in those more closed to trade.
Dramatic illustrations of this phenomenon include China’s rapid growth after 1978 and India’s
after 1991, those dates indicating when major trade reforms took place.

For many countries, unilateral reforms are the only effective way to reduce domestic trade
barriers. However, multilateral and bilateral approaches—dismantling trade barriers in concert
with other countries—have two advantages over unilateral approaches. First, the economic gains
from international trade are reinforced and enhanced when many countries or regions agree to a
mutual reduction in trade barriers. By broadening markets, concerted liberalization of trade
increases competition and specialization among countries, thus giving a bigger boost
to EFFICIENCY and consumer incomes.
Second, multilateral reductions in trade barriers may reduce political opposition to free trade in
each of the countries involved. That is because groups that otherwise would oppose or be
indifferent to trade reform might join the campaign for free trade if they see opportunities for
exporting to the other countries in the trade agreement. Consequently, free trade agreements
between countries or regions are a useful strategy for liberalizing world trade.

The best possible outcome of trade negotiations is a multilateral agreement that includes all
major trading countries. Then, free trade is widened to allow many participants to achieve the
greatest possible gains from trade. After World War II, the United States helped found the
General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT), whichquickly became the world’s most
important multilateral trade arrangement.

The major countries of the world set up the GATT in reaction to the waves
of PROTECTIONISM that crippled world trade during—and helped extend—the GREAT
DEPRESSION of the 1930s. In successive negotiating “rounds,” the GATT substantially reduced
the tariff barriers on manufactured goods in the industrial countries. Since the GATT began in
1947, average tariffs set by industrial countries have fallen from about 40 percent to about 5
percent today. These tariff reductions helped promote the tremendous expansion of world trade
after World War II and the concomitant rise in real per capita incomes among developed and
developing nations alike. The annual gain from removal of tariff and nontariff barriers to trade as
a result of the Uruguay Round Agreement (negotiated under the auspices of the GATT between
1986 and 1993) has been put at about $96 billion, or 0.4 percent of world GDP.

In 1995, the GATT became the World Trade Organization (WTO), which now has more than 140
member countries. The WTO oversees four international trade agreements: the GATT, the
General Agreement on Trade in Services (GATS), and agreements on trade-related INTELLECTUAL
PROPERTY rights and trade-related INVESTMENT (TRIPS and TRIMS, respectively). The WTO is
now the forum for members to negotiate reductions in trade barriers; the most recent forum is
the Doha Development Round, launched in 2001.

The WTO also mediates disputes between member countries over trade matters. If one country’s
government accuses another country’s government of violating world trade rules, a WTO panel
rules on the dispute. (The panel’s ruling can be appealed to an appellate body.) If the WTO finds
that a member country’s government has not complied with the agreements it signed, the
member is obligated to change its policy and bring it into conformity with the rules. If the
member finds it politically impossible to change its policy, it can offer compensation to other
countries in the form of lower trade barriers on other goods. If it chooses not to do this, then
other countries can receive authorization from the WTO to impose higher duties (i.e., to
“retaliate”) on goods coming from the offending member country for its failure to comply.
As a multilateral trade agreement, the GATT requires its signatories to extend most-favored-
nation (MFN) status to other trading partners participating in the WTO. MFN status means that
each WTO member receives the same tariff treatment for its goods in foreign markets as that
extended to the “most-favored” country competing in the same market, thereby ruling out
preferences for, or discrimination against, any member country.

Although the WTO embodies the principle of nondiscrimination in international trade, article 24
of the GATT permits the formation of free-trade areas and “customs unions” among WTO
members. A free-trade area is a group of countries that eliminate all tariffs on trade with each
other but retain autonomy in determining their tariffs with nonmembers. A customs union is a
group of countries that eliminate all tariffs on trade among themselves but maintain a common
external tariff on trade with countries outside the union (thus technically violating MFN).

The customs union exception was designed, in part, to accommodate the formation of the
European Economic Community (EC) in 1958. The EC, originally formed by six European
countries, is now known as the EUROPEAN UNION (EU) and includes twenty-seven European
countries. The EU has gone beyond simply reducing barriers to trade among member states and
forming a customs union. It has moved toward even greater economic integration by becoming a
common market—an arrangement that eliminates impediments to the mobility of factors of
production, such as capital and labor, between participating countries. As a common market, the
EU also coordinates and harmonizes each country’s tax, industrial, and agricultural policies. In
addition, many members of the EU have formed a single currency area by replacing their
domestic currencies with the euro.

The GATT also permits free-trade areas (FTAs), such as the European Free Trade Area, which is
composed primarily of Scandinavian countries. Members of FTAs eliminate tariffs on trade with
each other but retain autonomy in determining their tariffs with nonmembers.

One difficulty with the WTO system has been the problem of maintaining and extending the
liberal world trading system in recent years. Multilateral negotiations over trade liberalization
move very slowly, and the requirement for consensus among the WTO’s many members limits
how far agreements on trade reform can go. As Mike Moore, a recent director-general of the
WTO, put it, the organization is like a car with one accelerator and 140 hand brakes. While
multilateral efforts have successfully reduced tariffs on industrial goods, it has had much less
success in liberalizing trade in agriculture, textiles, and apparel, and in other areas of
international commerce. Recent negotiations, such as the Doha Development Round, have run
into problems, and their ultimate success is uncertain.

As a result, many countries have turned away from the multilateral process toward bilateral or
regional trade agreements. One such agreement is the North American Free Trade Agreement
(NAFTA), which went into effect in January 1994. Under the terms of NAFTA, the United States,
Canada, and Mexico agreed to phase out all tariffs on merchandise trade and to reduce
restrictions on trade in services and foreign investment over a decade. The United States also
has bilateral agreements with Israel, Jordan, Singapore, and Australia and is negotiating bilateral
or regional trade agreements with countries in Latin America, Asia, and the Pacific. The
European Union also has free-trade agreements with other countries around the world.

The advantage of such bilateral or regional arrangements is that they promote greater trade
among the parties to the agreement. They may also hasten global trade liberalization if
multilateral negotiations run into difficulties. Recalcitrant countries excluded from bilateral
agreements, and hence not sharing in the increased trade these bring, may then be induced to
join and reduce their own barriers to trade. Proponents of these agreements have called this
process “competitive liberalization,” wherein countries are challenged to reduce trade barriers to
keep up with other countries. For example, shortly after NAFTA was implemented, the EU sought
and eventually signed a free-trade agreement with Mexico to ensure that European goods would
not be at a competitive disadvantage in the Mexican market as a result of NAFTA.

But these advantages must be offset against a disadvantage: by excluding certain countries,
these agreements may shift the composition of trade from low-cost countries that are not party
to the agreement to high-cost countries that are.

Suppose, for example, that JAPAN sells bicycles for fifty dollars, Mexico sells them for sixty
dollars, and both face a twenty-dollar U.S. tariff. If tariffs are eliminated on Mexican goods, U.S.
consumers will shift their purchases from Japanese to Mexican bicycles. The result is that
Americans will purchase from a higher-cost source, and the U.S. government receives no tariff
revenue. Consumers save ten dollars per bicycle, but the government loses twenty dollars.
Economists have shown that if a country enters such a “trade-diverting” customs union, the cost
of this trade diversion may exceed the benefits of increased trade with the other members of the
customs union. The net result is that the customs union could make the country worse off.

Critics of bilateral and regional approaches to trade liberalization have many additional
arguments. They suggest that these approaches may undermine and supplant, instead of
support and complement, the multilateral WTO approach, which is to be preferred for operating
globally on a nondiscriminatory basis. Hence, the long-term result of bilateralism could be a
deterioration of the world trading system into competing, discriminatory regional trading blocs,
resulting in added complexity that complicates the smooth flow of goods between countries.
Furthermore, the reform of such issues as agricultural export subsidies cannot be dealt with
effectively at the bilateral or regional level.
Despite possible tensions between the two approaches, it appears that both multilateral and
bilateral/regional trade agreements will remain features of the world economy. Both the WTO
and agreements such as NAFTA, however, have become controversial among groups such as
antiglobalization protesters, who argue that such agreements serve the interests of
multinational CORPORATIONS and not workers, even though freer trade has been a time-proven
method of improving economic performance and raising overall incomes. To accommodate this
opposition, there has been pressure to include labor and environmental standards in these trade
agreements. Labor standards include provisions for MINIMUM WAGES and working conditions,
while environmental standards would prevent trade if environmental damage was feared.

One motivation for such standards is the fear that unrestricted trade will lead to a “race to the
bottom” in labor and environmental standards as multinationals search the globe for low wages
and lax environmental regulations in order to cut costs. Yet there is no empirical evidence of any
such race. Indeed, trade usually involves the transfer of technology to developing countries,
which allows wage rates to rise, as Korea’s economy—among many others—has demonstrated
since the 1960s. In addition, rising incomes allow cleaner production technologies to become
affordable. The replacement of pollution-belching domestically produced scooters in India with
imported scooters from Japan, for example, would improve air quality in India.

LABOR UNIONS and environmentalists in rich countries have most actively sought labor and
environmental standards. The danger is that enforcing such standards may simply become an
excuse for rich-country protectionism, which would harm workers in poor countries. Indeed,
people in poor countries, whether capitalists or laborers, have been extremely hostile to the
imposition of such standards. For example, the 1999 WTO meeting in Seattle collapsed in part
because developing countries objected to the Clinton administration’s attempt to include labor
standards in multilateral agreements.

A safe prediction is that international trade agreements will continue to generate controversy.