1947 - GATT - 'General Agreement On Tariffs And Trade (click here)
...a multilateral agreement regulating trade among 153 countries. According to its preamble, the purpose of the GATT is the "substantial reduction of tariffs and other trade barriers and the elimination of preferences, on a reciprocal and mutually advantageous basis."...
Trade Expansion Act of 1962 (click here)
...a multilateral agreement regulating trade among 153 countries. According to its preamble, the purpose of the GATT is the "substantial reduction of tariffs and other trade barriers and the elimination of preferences, on a reciprocal and mutually advantageous basis."...
Trade Expansion Act of 1962 (click here)
TODAY I am signing H.R. 11970, the Trade Expansion Act of 1962.
This is the most important international piece of legislation, I think, affecting economics since the passage of the Marshall plan. It marks a decisive point for the future of our economy, for our relations with our friends and allies, and for the prospects of free institutions and free societies everywhere....
NAFTA came before the WTO. NAFTA pits the people against the corporations. Here are some of it's more important provisions:
Limits on the safety and inspection of meat sold in our grocery stores
new patent rules that raised medicine prices
Constraints on your local government’s ability to zone against sprawl or toxic industries
Elimination of preferences for spending your tax dollars on U.S.-made products or locally-grown food.
In fact, calling NAFTA a “trade” agreement is misleading, (click here) NAFTA is really an investment agreement. Its core provisions grant foreign investors a remarkable set of new rights and privileges that promote relocation abroad of factories and jobs and the privatization and deregulation of essential services, such as water, energy and health care.
On January 1, 1994, the North American Free Trade Agreement between the United States, Canada, and Mexico (NAFTA) entered into force.
All remaining duties and quantitative restrictions were eliminated, as scheduled, on January 1, 2008.
NAFTA created the world's largest free trade area, which now links 450 million people producing $17 trillion worth of goods and services.
Trade between the United States and its NAFTA partners has soared since the agreement entered into force.
U.S. goods and services trade with NAFTA totaled $1.6 trillion in 2009 (latest data available for goods and services trade combined). Exports totaled $397 billion. Imports totaled $438 billion. The U.S. goods and services trade deficit with NAFTA was $41 billion in 2009.
The World Trade Organization incorporated GATT into it's laws and established a World Trade Court (click here).
World Trade Organization (WTO), which came into being on January 1, 1995. The WTO implements the agreement, provides a forum for negotiating additional reductions of trade barriers and for settling policy disputes, and enforces trade rules....
And now there is the Trans-Pacific Partnership. It is mostly NAFTA with a large number of participants.
TPP Leaders (click here) at the APEC Summit in Japan, 2010, photo credit to Gobierno de Chile.
