ABSTRACT
The crisis of the Seventies was counteracted by the developed countries mainly through non-tariff regulations and through quotas and import licenses on the basis of hyper-extensive interpretations of General Agreement on Tariffs and trade (GATT) exceptions. The technological crisis of the Eighties was mainly combated with "grey area" measures and instruments of industrial policy at a domestic level such as subsidies, technical norms, and state contracts of a discriminatory character and national legislation which bordered on the illegal with respect to GATT. The multilateral agreements regarding non-tariff measures obtained within GATT numbered five: codes on subsidies; customs values; state purchases for public markets; proceedings for import licenses and technical obstacles to trade. The original GATT tried to avoid qualifying these acts as violations because this would generate responsibility on the one hand and judicial or administrative solutions on the other instead of looking for the exercise of commercial diplomacy.
