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Constructing a Constitution for Trade in Services
Author(s) -
Jackson John H.
Publication year - 1988
Publication title -
world economy
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.594
H-Index - 68
eISSN - 1467-9701
pISSN - 0378-5920
DOI - 10.1111/j.1467-9701.1988.tb00122.x
Subject(s) - constitution , citation , law , political science , library science , sociology , computer science
HE NEED for some kind of international coordination and cooperation concerning trade in services across borders has become apparent. While there exists an international legal framework (albeit troubled and evolving) for trade in goods, there is very little such framework for trade in services, except in certain specific industries. Services make up a greater percentage of the gross national product (GNP) of major industrialized countries than the production of goods and they also comprise a significant percentage of world trade. These considerations were among those which led the contracting parties to the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) to include provisions for negotiating agreements on trade in services in the declaration issued after the special ministerial meeting, held in September 1986 at Punta del Este, that launched the Uruguay Round of multilateral trade negotiations, the eighth such round in the forty-year history of the GATT. ’ Because of the great variety of service activities, because they often do not involve tangible property and because it is sometimes difficult or impossible to identify when a service ‘crosses a border’, the national or international regulation of service activities is very difficult. For similar reasons, it will be very difficult to develop a new legal framework for trade in services. The GATT model is often cited as a possible approach. Because of the great differences between trade in services and trade in goods, however, it is quite doubtful whether the GATT model could be followed very closely. The purpose of this article is to explore, in the context of the Uruguay Round negotiations, the possible legal-institutional structure which could be used to develop an international discipline on trade in services and to compare such a structure with the GATT model. The ideas and reflections expressed in the article stem partly from considerable discussion about trade in services with other scholars, government officials and policy makers. No special claim to originality for many of these ideas is made,