The Threats to the World Trading System

intend to consider here the prospects for the GATT-focused multilateral trading system, the perils it faces and the promise it nonetheless holds. The threats faced at present by the GA’IT arise from a variety of factors, including changes in the world economy. These changes have produced fissiparous tendencies gnawing at many of the basic principles embodied in the GATT. Recalling the preamble to the GATT, and mindful of its central articles, the following may justifiably be cited as the main principles of the GATT A ‘fix-rule’ trading regime is to be preferred to a ‘fix-quantity’ one. In other words, ‘managed trade’ (or ‘results-oriented’ trade), which seeks quantitative targets of outcomes in trade instead of settling on rules and lettingchips fall where they may, is to be rejected. Multilateralism, where these trade rules extend without discrimination to all members of the trading regime, is generally to be preferred to discriminatory arrangements. Markets are to be opened through conventional reduction in trade barriers, and new disciplines are to be established, by resort to mutuality and balance of concessions, ruling out aggressive, unilaterally-determined demands for unrequited concessions that could come from the strong against the weak.’ And in the same spirit of the rule of law, the adjudication of dispute must be impartial, pitting the strong against the weak in equal contest, both the balance