Markets, Policies, and Trade Rules in Crisis: 1979–86

Abstract

As the Tokyo Round was concluded and the 1970s drew to a close, it was clear that the GATT system was still weak in the area of agricultural trade. Domestic agricultural policies were hardly constrained at all by international disciplines, and conditions in international trade were dominated by the influence of these national farm programmes. A large number of agricultural trade disputes were brought before the GATT, and even though most of these disputes were settled in a legal sense, these settlements did not have much of an effect on the way government policies impinged on trade flows. The situation had hardly improved at all since the inception of the GATT thirty years before.