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Multilateralism compromised: the mysterious origins of GATT Article XXIV

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  26 January 2006

KERRY CHASE
KERRY CHASE
Affiliation:
Department of Political Science and Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy, Tufts University
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Abstract

The GATT treaty's loophole for free trade areas in Article XXIV has puzzled and deceived prominent scholars, who trace its postwar origins to US aspirations to promote European integration and efforts to persuade developing countries to endorse the Havana Charter. Drawing from archival records, this article shows that in fact US policymakers crafted the controversial provisions of Article XXIV to accommodate a trade treaty they had secretly reached with Canada. As a result, the free trade area exemption was embedded in the GATT–WTO regime, even though neither the Havana Charter nor the US–Canada free trade agreement was ever ratified. Theoretically, the case is an important example of how Cold War exigencies altered the policy ideas of US officials.

Type
Research Article
Information
World Trade Review , Volume 5 , Issue 1 , March 2006 , pp. 1 - 30
Copyright
© 2006 Kerry Chase

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Footnotes

Thanks to James Mathis, Tony Smith, and Sevan Terzian for helpful comments on earlier drafts. The faculty Research Awards Committee at Tufts University funded my research at the US National Archives, and the staff at Archives II in College Park, Maryland, assisted me with locating records.