Uruguay Round

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Uruguay Round

The Uruguay Round commenced in September 1986 and continued until April 1994. The round, based on the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade

General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade

The General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade was the outcome of the failure of negotiating governments to create the International Trade Organization ....
(GATT) ministerial meeting in Geneva (1982), was launched in Punta del Este

Punta del Este

Punta del Este is an upscale resort on the southern tip of Uruguay, southeast of Maldonado, Uruguay and about 140 km east of Montevideo. Although the town has a year-round population of 10,506 , the summer tourist boom often boosts the population to about one million people between December and February....
in Uruguay

Uruguay

Montreal

Montreal, or Montr?al, is the largest city in the Provinces and territories of Canada of Quebec and the List of largest cities and second largest cities by country List of the 100 largest municipalities in Canada by population....
, Geneva

Geneva

Geneva is the second-most-populous city in Switzerland and is the most populous city of Romandie . Situated where the Rh?ne River exits Lake Geneva , it is the capital of the Canton of Geneva....
, Brussels

Brussels

Brussels , officially the Brussels Capital-Region, is the de facto capital city of the European Union and the largest urban area in Belgium....
, Washington, D.C.

Washington, D.C.

Washington, D.C. , formally the District of Columbia and commonly referred to as Washington, the District, or simply D.C., is the Capital of the United States, founded on July 16, 1790....
, and Tokyo

Tokyo

, officially , is one of the 47 prefectures of Japan of Japan and located on the eastern side of the main island Honshu. The twenty-three special wards of Tokyo, each governed as a city, cover the area that was once the Tokyo City in the eastern part of the prefecture, and total over 8 million people....
, with the 20 agreements finally being signed in Marrakech

Marrakech

Marrakesh or Marrakech , known as the "Red City", is an important city/Wiktionary:medina in Morocco. It has a population of 1,036,500 , and is the capital of the mid-southwestern economic region of Marrakech-Tensift-Al Haouz , near the foothills of the snow-capped Atlas Mountains....
- the Marrakesh Agreement

World Trade Organization

The World Trade Organization is an international organization designed to supervise and Free trade international trade. The WTO came into being on 1 January 1995, and is the successor to the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade , which was created in 1947, and continued to operate for almost five decades as a de facto international org...
. The Round transformed the GATT into the World Trade Organization.

The Doha Development Round was the next trade round to commence in 2001.

They also wanted to draft a code to deal with copyright violation

Copyright infringement is the unauthorized use of material that is covered by copyright law, in a manner that violates one of the copyright owner's exclusive rights, such as the right to reproduce or perform the copyrighted work, or to make derivative works....
and other forms of intellectual property

Intellectual property

Intellectual property are law property over creations of the mind, both artistic and commercial, and the corresponding fields of law. Under intellectual property law, owners are granted certain exclusive rights to a variety of intangible assets, such as musical, literary, and artistic works; ideas, discoveries and inventions; and words, phra...
rights.

Background
The 1982 Ministerial Declaration identified problems including structural deficiencies, spill-over impacts of certain countries' policies on world trade GATT could not manage.

Discussion

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Encyclopedia

The Uruguay Round commenced in September 1986 and continued until April 1994. The round, based on the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade

General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade

Punta del Este

Uruguay

Montreal

Geneva

Brussels

Brussels , officially the Brussels Capital-Region, is the de facto capital city of the European Union and the largest urban area in Belgium....
, Washington, D.C.

Washington, D.C.

Tokyo

Marrakech

World Trade Organization

Goals

The main objectives of the Uruguay Round were:

to reduce agricultural subsidies
Agricultural subsidy

An agricultural subsidy is a governmental subsidy paid to farmers and agribusinesses to supplement their income, manage the supply of agricultural commodity, and influence the cost and supply of such commodities....
to put restrictions on foreign investment, and
to begin the process of opening trade in services like bank
Bank

A bank is a financial institution whose primary activity is to act as a payment agent for customers and to borrow and lend money. It is an institution for receiving, keeping, and lending money....
ing and insurance
Insurance

Insurance, in law and economics, is a form of risk management primarily used to Hedge against the risk of a contingent loss. Insurance is defined as the equitable transfer of the risk of a loss, from one entity to another, in exchange for a premium, and can be thought of as a guaranteed small loss to prevent a large, possibly devastating los...
.

They also wanted to draft a code to deal with copyright violation

Intellectual property

Background

The 1982 Ministerial Declaration identified problems including structural deficiencies, spill-over impacts of certain countries' policies on world trade GATT could not manage. To address these issues, the eighth GATT round (known as the Uruguay Round) was launched in September 1986, in Punta del Este

Punta del Este

Uruguay

Uruguay is a country located in the southeastern part of South America. It is home to 3.46 million people, of whom 1.7 million live in the capital Montevideo and its metropolitan area....
. It was the biggest negotiating mandate on trade ever agreed: the talks were going to extend the trading system into several new areas, notably trade in services and intellectual property, and to reform trade in the sensitive sectors of agriculture and textiles; all the original GATT articles were up for review.

The round was supposed to end in December 1990, but the US and EU disagreed on how to reform agricultural trade and decided to extend the talks. Finally, In November 1992, the US and EU settled most of their differences in a deal known informally as "the Blair House accord", and on April 15 1994, the deal was signed by ministers from most of the 123 participating governments at a meeting in Marrakesh, Morocco

Morocco

Morocco , officially the Kingdom of Morocco , is a country located in North Africa with a population of nearly 34 million and an area just under 447,000 km2....
. The agreement established the World Trade Organization

World Trade Organization

The World Trade Organization is an international organization designed to supervise and Free trade international trade. The WTO came into being on 1 January 1995, and is the successor to the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade , which was created in 1947, and continued to operate for almost five decades as a de facto international org...
, which came into being upon its entry into force on January 1, 1995, to replace the GATT system. It is widely regarded as the most profound institutional reform of the world trading system since the GATT's establishment.

Achievements

The GATT still exists as the WTO's umbrella treaty for trade in goods, updated as a result of 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 the heart of GATT 1994). The GATT 1994 is not however the only legally binding agreement included in the Final Act; a long list of about 60 agreements, annexes, decisions and understandings was adopted. In fact, the agreements fall into a simple structure with six main parts:

an umbrella agreement (the Agreement Establishing the WTO);
agreements for each of the three broad areas of trade that the WTO covers: goods and investment (the Multilateral Agreements on Trade in Goods including the GATT 1994 and the Trade Related Investment Measures
Trade Related Investment Measures

The Agreement on Trade Related Investment Measures are rules that apply to the domestic regulations a country applies to foreign investors, often as part of an industrial policy....
(TRIMS)), General Agreement on Trade in Services
General Agreement on Trade in Services

The General Agreement on Trade in Services is a treaty of the World Trade Organization that entered into force in January 1995 as a result of the Uruguay Round negotiations....
(GATS), and Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights
Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights

The Agreement on Trade Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights is an international agreement administered by the World Trade Organization that sets down minimum standards for many forms of intellectual property regulation....
(TRIPS);
dispute settlement (DSU); and
reviews of governments' trade policies (TPRM).

Criticism

Groups such as Oxfam

Oxfam

Oxfam International is a confederation of 13 organizations working with over 3,000 partners in more than 100 countries to find lasting solutions to poverty and injustice....
have criticized the Uruguay Round for paying insufficient attention to the special needs of developing countries

Developing country

A developing country is a country that has often low standards of democracy, industrialisation, Social work, and Human rights for its citizens....
. One aspect of this criticism is that figures very close to rich country industries — such as former Cargill

Cargill

Cargill, Incorporated is a privately held corporation, multinational corporation, and is based in the state of Minnesota in the United States of America....
executive Dan Amstutz

Dan Amstutz

Daniel G. Amstutz was a U.S. government official and grain-trading industry executive who played a prominent role in the negotiation of the Uruguay RoundGeneral Agreement on Tariffs and Trade rules on agriculture and the U.S....
— had a major role in the drafting of Uruguay Round language on agriculture

Agriculture

Agriculture refers to the production of food and goods through farming and forestry. Agriculture was the key development that led to the rise of civilization, with the animal husbandry of domestication animals and plants creating food surpluses that enabled the development of more Population density and Social stratification societies....
and other matters. As with the WTO in general, Non-governmental organization

Non-governmental organization

Non-governmental organization is a term that has become widely accepted for referring to a legally constituted, non-business organization created by natural or legal persons with no participation or representation of any government....
s (NGOs) such as Health Gap and Global Trade Watch

Global Trade Watch

Global Trade Watch was created in 1995 as a division of the U.S.-based non-governmental organization Public Citizen that monitors the World Trade Organization and other trade agreements such as the North American Free Trade Agreement and the Central America Free Trade Agreement ....
also criticize what was negotiated in the Round on intellectual property

Intellectual property

Tariff

A tariff is a tax imposed on goods when they are moved across a political boundary. They are usually associated with protectionism, the economic policy of restraining trade between nations....
s as setting up too many constraints on policy-making and human needs.

Uruguay Round

Goals

Background

Achievements

Criticism

See also

External links