Page 171 - DMGT545_INTERNATIONAL_BUSINESS

International Business

notes agreement on technical Barriers to trade (tBt)

The Agreement on Technical Barriers to Trade - also known as the TBT Agreement is an
international treaty of the World Trade Organization. It was negotiated during the Uruguay Round
of the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade, and entered into force with the establishment of
the WTO at the end of 1994.
The object of the TBT Agreement is “to ensure that technical negotiations and standards, as well
as testing and certification procedures, do not create unnecessary obstacles to trade”.

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Caselet african individual

conomist Andre Nijsen uses the example of Tanzania, in Africa, to show how an
usable set of export policies can be adopted. In the 1990s, this poor, African state
Esought to triple its exports and imitate the success of the East Asian States. The
basic Tanzanian policy was to first identify the country’s strengths. In this case, it was
plentiful natural resources such as minerals usable in the global industry. The government
intervenes, creating the incentive structure important to development. The government
would make it easier in every way to shift production to the export market, even
underwriting new industries. The legal, regulatory and judicial sectors were overhauled,
and the infrastructure of the country was targeted for investment and improvement. While
the program was only a partial success—largely due to public sector failures – the basic
pillars of this reform remain sound.

Source: http://www.ehow.com/info_7779251_export-development.html

8.2 General agreement on tariffs and trade (Gatt)

The General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (typically abbreviated GATT) was originally created
by the Breton Woods Conference as part of a larger plan for economic recovery after World War
II. The GATT’s main purpose was to reduce barriers to international trade. This was achieved
through the reduction of tariff barriers, quantitative restrictions and subsidies on trade through
a series of different agreements. The GATT was an agreement, not an organization. Originally,
the GATT was supposed to become a full international organization like the World Bank or IMF
called the International Trade Organization. However, the agreement was not ratified, so the
GATT remained simply an agreement. The functions of the GATT have been replaced by the
World Trade Organization which was established through the final round of negotiations in the
early 1990s.
The history of the GATT can be divided into three phases: the first, from 1947 until the Torquay
round, largely concerned which commodities would be covered by the agreement and freezing
existing tariff levels. A second phase, encompassing three rounds, from 1959 to 1979, focused
on reducing tariffs. The third phase, consisting only of the Uruguay Round from 1986 to 1994,
extended the agreement fully to new areas such as intellectual property, services, capital, and
agriculture. Out of this round the WTO was born.

Gatt 1947

The first version of GATT, developed in 1947 during the United Nations Conference on Trade
and Employment in Havana, Cuba, is referred to as “GATT 1947”. On January 1, 1948 the
agreement was signed by 23 countries: Australia, Belgium, Brazil, Burma, Canada, Ceylon, Chile,
the Republic of China, Cuba, the Czechoslovak Republic, France, India, Lebanon, Luxembourg,
Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Pakistan, Southern Rhodesia, Syria, South Africa, the

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