tries (the G-77) during this time period were, “in disarray, stricken by debt obligations and the impact of changes in the former Soviet Union and the end of the cold war in world politics. Moreover, developing countries were not...technically prepared for the negotiations while they lacked their own trade objectives and adequate strategies.” They were influenced, or under pressure to except, the dominant views of the time, which glorified the advantages of universal-trade liberalization. For these reasons, the South’s concerns were greatly underrepresented in the Agreement’s result.The Uruguay Round proved to have a profound impact on world trade. Mainly this impact came from, the transformation of the GATT to the World Trade Organization (WTO), and the establishment of an agenda that would further extend the scope of free trade. Under the new Uruguay Round rules, the primary goal was the liberalization of international trade in such a way that all parties involved would benefit, which would be administered by the WTO. Although this goal had merit, its structure has not “served to advance the interests” of the trading nations, and specifically the South. This brief history leads us now to where trade policy currently stands, in a state of limbo. This is evidenced by, “the deadlock in negotiations during the recent meetings of the WTO [that] have demonstrated the severe differences among various groups of member countries on such issues as universal and across-the-board trade liberalization.” The fact is that there has been a failure of trade liberalization in the 1980s and 1990s. A number of factors have brought this failure to the forefront of both developed and developing countries agendas and caused them, “to have second thoughts on the merits of fast, universal and across-the-board trade liberalization.” One of these factors is the development of the balance-o...
