The GATT, Middle Powers and the Uruguay Round

Randall White, a political scientist, is also a Toronto-based economic
consultant and author of Voice of Region: On the Long Journey to Senate
Reform in Canada.

This 52-page report is “the final product of the North-South
Institute’s major policy research project on ‘Middle Powers in the
International System’.” Its purpose is to assess the extent to which
countries such as Canada, Australia, Sweden, Austria, Brazil, Mexico,
India, and Nigeria can play a stronger role in the growth of the General
Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (the gatt).

As Finlayson and Weston’s report briefly outlines, after World War II
the gatt rather haphazardly evolved as the major force for developing a
“rule-oriented” rather than a “power-oriented” regime of
international trade. It has traditionally been dominated, however, by
the “majors” of the global economy—today, the United States, the
European Community, and Japan.

In the current Uruguay Round of gatt negotiations, some “middle
powers,” like Canada, have played a somewhat more prominent role. The
typical vehicles for this new prominence have been informal coalitions
such as the “Cairns Group” on agricultural trade. (Others have had
such exotic names as the “De La Paix Group,” named after the Geneva
hotel, and the “Café-au-Lait Group.”)

The authors believe that such middle-power activism can benefit both
international trade and individual middle powers. At the same time, they
feel duty-bound “not to exaggerate the potential influence of middle
powers in the gatt, or their ability to articulate and act on common
perceived trade policy interests and objectives.”

They stress as well “the stalemate, if not deteriorating relations,
between the three majors, raising doubts as to their commitment to the
Uruguay Round”—or even to the long-term future of the gatt itself,
in a new and perhaps less friendly world of emerging regional trading
blocs.