State Trading and the GATT

Ivan Bernier

Chapter 12 in State Trading in International Markets, 1982, pp 245-260 from Palgrave Macmillan

Abstract: Abstract In June 1947, during the second session of the Preparatory Committee of the United Nations Conference on Trade and Employment, the delegate of New Zealand declared: We should beware of attempting to legislate too precisely to meet the case of State enterprises, not out of any feeling that State enter?prises should be put in a privileged position, but rather from the feeling that the first essential of sound legislation is that we should be thoroughly familiar with what we are legislating about.1 Unfortunately, this precious advice, it seems, has been lost in the discussions. More than thirty years later, one must admit that the present GATT measures dealing with state trading remain, to a large extent, an exercise in futility, based on a misunderstanding of the real nature of state enterprises and monopolies. Suffice it to mention, at this stage, that the main obligation imposed by the GATT on state-trading enterprises is to act as if they were private enterprises: but how can this be done, when state enterprises and monopolies are created precisely to fulfil roles not normally assumed by private enterprises?

Keywords: Private Enterprise; State Trading; State Enterprise; Contracting Parti; Export Subsidy (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 1982
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DOI: 10.1007/978-1-349-05887-7_13

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