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.For the United States in particular, concessionscovered 56 percent of total dutiable imports, and, as Finger (1979,p.423) notes, tariff reductions plus tariff bindings covered 78 percentof total imports.The next two negotiating rounds (Annecy 1949 andTorquay 1951) mainly involved newly acceding countries to theGATT, and in this sense these rounds can be considered as a comple-tion of the first round.Once tariff bindings were effected, the Geneva(1956), Dillon (1960 1961), and Kennedy (1963 1967) Rounds thenfocused almost entirely on tariff reductions.There were 48 countriesinvolved in the Kennedy Round and $40 billion of trade covered bytariff concessions.While tariff reductions also figured importantly inthe Tokyo Round (1973 1979), the primary focus by then was onnontariff measures.The Uruguay Round (1986 1994) is the eighthnegotiating round.It involved some 100 participating countries andhad a large agenda, including negotiations on: trade barriers; sectoralliberalization (e.g., agriculture and textiles and apparel); GATT rules,procedures, and the functioning of the GATT system; and new issues (intellectual property rights, trade-related investment measures,and services).All of these multilateral rounds might suggest that the worldshifted abruptly after World War II from bilateral deals to a system ofpurely multilateral cooperation.Such was not the case, however.AsWinters (1990) notes, the negotiations themselves were completelybilateral in the early GATT rounds, and their multilateral implicationarose solely from the requirement of MFN.In an effort to deal withproblems of free riding, the negotiated concessions were lumped intoa single package and were provisional until the overall agreement wascompleted and signed.This was intended to provide a means of assess-ing the reciprocity of concessions.In addition, efforts were made tomaximize the benefits of the liberalization for the negotiating parties.Finger (1979) refers to this as internalization, and it is measured asthe imports subject to tariff reductions as a percentage of all dutiableimports on either a bilateral or multilateral basis.In order to maxi-mize the degree of internalization, countries negotiated on a product-by-product, principal supplier basis, meaning that concessions were b723_Chapter-06.qxd 7/15/2009 9:59 AM Page 160160 A.V.Deardorff & R.M.Sternto be exchanged bilaterally on goods for which the two countrieswere each other s major suppliers.The importance of internalizationcan be seen in Table 1, where it apparently became increasingly diffi-cult to select goods for negotiating purposes in the successive rounds.That is, the import coverage of U.S.tariff reductions decreased from56 percent in the Geneva Round (1947) to 19 percent in the DillonRound (1960 1961).At the same time, the bilateral internalizationratio in the Dillon Round grew to 69 percent and the multilateralratio to 96 percent.Given the obvious limitations of the product-by-product, principal-supplier approach in the Dillon Round, it was decided in the KennedyRound to adopt an across-the-board form of tariff negotiationwhereby tariff rates were to be reduced by a fixed percentage accord-ing to an agreed formula, with exemptions to be negotiated forindustries that were deemed too sensitive to liberalize.It is evidentfrom Table 1 that the import coverage of U.S.tariff reductions in theKennedy Round was increased substantially as compared to the DillonRound, and that the degree of multilateral internalization remainedrelatively high.This is noteworthy in view of the fact, as Winters(1990) points out, that the tariff negotiations still had a pronouncedbilateral orientation.In addition to its tariff negotiations, the KennedyRound agenda was intended to include negotiations on NTBs andagriculture and to give special attention to developing country exports.It was also decided to forego reciprocal concessions on the part ofdeveloping countries.As Winters (1990) and others have noted, theKennedy Round did not succeed to any important extent in reducingexisting NTBs, and the agricultural negotiations failed.It also appearedthat the only developing countries to gain significantly in the KennedyRound were those that did make reciprocal concessions, so that the special and differential treatment of developing countries was ofquestionable value to them.The principle of across-the-board linear reductions of tariff rateswith exemptions was continued in the Tokyo Round, again involvinga significant element of bilateralism.But the Tokyo Round dealt pri-marily with the rules of the GATT system, including technical standards,customs valuation, import licensing and quantitative restrictions, b723_Chapter-06.qxd 7/15/2009 9:59 AM Page 161Multilateral Trade Negotiations and Preferential Trading Arrangements 161safeguards, subsidies and countervailing duties, antidumping, govern-ment procurement, and civil aviation.The Tokyo Round constitutedtherefore a marked departure from earlier rounds in view of its focuson GATT rules and procedures.Since these are constitutional mat-ters, they clearly do not lend themselves to quantitative assessmentand to bilateral quid pro quo concessions.It also means that it is dif-ficult to achieve consensus on the design and scope of the specificnegotiating items, and, accordingly, that the negotiations may be pro-tracted and nettlesome if there are significant disagreements amongthe major participants.The United States led an effort to launch the eighth round ofGATT negotiations at the GATT Ministerial Meeting in 1982, butthis meeting was apparently badly timed in view of the ongoing worldrecession, and there were important disagreements about the agendathat was tabled.As already noted, the Uruguay Round was subse-quently initiated in 1986.It is unquestionably the most far reachingof all the GATT rounds to date.The Uruguay Round has fourteenindividual negotiating groups dealing with trade barriers, sectoralissues, GATT rules and procedures, and new issues.As Winters(1990) notes, it has an even stronger orientation towards constitu-tional matters than was the case in the Tokyo Round.It also seeks toaddress the difficult issues of agricultural subsidy programs, reaffirmsthe continuation of the special and differential treatment for mostdeveloping countries, and leaves the questions of the choice of for-mulae for reductions in tariffs and NTBs to be decided in the courseof the negotiations.The Uruguay Round was scheduled for completion in December1990, but the negotiations were suspended because the United Statesand the Cairns Group of other major agricultural exporting countriesconsidered the offer by the European Community (EC) to reduce itsagricultural subsidies to be unacceptably small.The Uruguay Roundnegotiations were later resumed, but their completion was still con-tingent on whether the EC would make agricultural concessions thatthe major agricultural exporters were willing to accept.This meansthat the rest of the Uruguay Round negotiating agenda was beingheld in abeyance. b723_Chapter-06.qxd 7/15/2009 9:59 AM Page 162162 A.V.Deardorff & R.M
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