However, it was not until the opening of the Uruguay Round in 1986 that agriculture was finally put on the negotiating agenda. The desire to reduce the continuing tensions between the United States and the EC over agricultural trade was one of the main reasons why a consensus was finally reached on the inclusion of agricultural trade in the GATT regulatory framework. However, consensus on how to achieve this was still a long way off at the time, and it took seven years of negotiations to reach an agreement. However, despite the importance of these other stakeholders, the Uruguay Round discussions were dominated by differences between the US and the EC, whose resolution set the pace of progress towards an agreement. The agreements for the two largest areas of the WTO, goods and services, have a three-part framework: the agenda originally provided for in the Uruguay Round agreements has been completed and amended. A number of items are now part of the Doha Agenda, some of which have been updated. The limited importance of GATT for agriculture has led to an ever-increasing level of protection and support for agriculture, particularly in developed countries, where the market share of many suppliers of traditional imports has declined sharply. Some net exporters, such as the United States, attempted to maintain their market share through export subsidy programs, while the market shares of exporters who were unable or unwilling to do so continued to decline. International tensions and disputes over agricultural trade have become more frequent, and GATT institutions have often been used to settle these disputes. In fact, 60% of all trade disputes submitted to GATT dispute settlement proceedings between 1980 and 1990 concerned agriculture.
These areas eventually became the three main pillars of the final agricultural agreement. But before that happens, negotiators would have to set the level of concessions that would be made, and it took another two years of difficult negotiations. Gatt still exists as the WTO Framework Agreement for Trade in Goods, updated following the Uruguay Round negotiations (a distinction is made between GATT 1994, the updated parts of GATT, and GATT 1947, the original agreement which is still at the heart of GATT 1994). [10] However, GATT 1994 is not the only legally binding agreement contained in the Final Act; A long list of about 60 agreements, annexes, decisions and arrangements was adopted. In fact, the agreements are divided into a simple structure with six main parties: nevertheless, it took another four years to review, clarify and laboriously reach consensus before ministers agreed to launch the new round. They did so in September 1986 in Punta del Este, Uruguay. They finally agreed to a negotiating agenda that covered virtually all outstanding trade policy issues. The objective of the talks was to extend the trading system to several new areas, in particular trade in services and IP, and to reform trade in the sensitive sectors of agriculture and textiles. All the original GATT articles could be examined.
It was the largest negotiating mandate for trade ever agreed, and ministers gave themselves four years to finalize it. At the mid-term review held in Montreal at the end of 1988, the parties to the Agriculture Group were further apart than ever and did not submit an interim text for consideration by the Group at the Montreal meeting. In the meantime, the Cairns Group has refused to approve the draft texts of one of the other 14 negotiating groups until there is a text on agriculture. After this failure, the main participants continued to seek a compromise: over the next two years, negotiations oscillated between imminent failure and predictions of imminent success. Several deadlines came and went. New sources of conflict have emerged for agriculture: services, market access, anti-dumping rules and the proposal to create a new institution. The differences between the United States and the European Union have become a central factor in the hope of a final and fruitful conclusion. However, the EC and other countries were reluctant to adopt such an approach. In particular, the EC has opposed a substantial reduction in its export subsidies.
Talks continued in the hope that an agreement could be reached by December 1990, the original date of the conclusion of the Uruguay Round. but the text presented there was rejected by the EC and the deadline came and went without any agreement being reached. It was not until 1991 that the negotiators finally reached a consensus in which the countries agreed to make concessions in each of the following three areas: in this context, the American and Community negotiators held a series of bilateral discussions which eventually resulted in an agreement known as the Blair House Agreement. The meeting that achieved this took place in November 1992 at Blair House in Washington and focused on appropriate amendments to the dunkel text. These changes included: in the 1980s, public payments to agricultural producers in developed countries had led to large crop surpluses, which were dumped on the world market by export subsidies and lowered food prices. The tax burden of safeguard measures has increased, due to both lower revenues from import duties and higher domestic expenditures. Meanwhile, the global economy has entered a cycle of recession and the perception that open markets could improve economic conditions has led to calls for a new round of multilateral trade negotiations. [2] The round would open up markets for high-tech services and goods and ultimately deliver much-needed efficiencies. To include developing countries, many of which were « demands » for new international disciplines, agriculture, textiles and clothing were added to the major arrangements. [1] The share of developing countries in world agricultural trade is relatively small (25% of world exports in 1992), but their growing share in world imports of agricultural products is larger. The commitments made in the agreement are expected to have a significant impact on this development, the most important impact resulting from the commitments made by industrialized countries to reduce export subsidies. If implemented in accordance with the letter and spirit of the Agreement, commitments in each of the following three areas should, in principle, contribute to the expansion of global trade opportunities.
It was only in the Uruguay Round that agriculture as a sector was finally firmly brought to the GATT negotiating table; Although some agricultural products have already appeared in the negotiations as individual commodities. The Dillon Round, for example, succeeded in reducing tariffs on canned soybeans, cotton, vegetables and fruits to very low levels, and the International Wheat Agreement and the International Milk and Meat Agreement were negotiated under the auspices of the Kennedy Round. .
