ABSTRACT
The justification of principle for trade liberalization is that it maximizes consumer choice, competition and hence efficiency and is therefore good in itself. During nearly fifty years the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT), mobilizing the enlightened self-interest of its members, has been the biggest single influence in the liberalization of world trade. GATT pursued this fundamentally liberal principle by developing a complex system of multilaterally agreed rights and obligations. That looks paradoxical, but in practice it was inevitable. While economic theory propounds—or sometimes debates—the intrinsic virtue and efficiency of liberalization, the political reality of trade negotiation is that governments have regarded access to their domestic markets as a threat to their own producers, and therefore as a concession to their trading partners which must be balanced, although not necessarily sector by sector, by benefits received. In 1947 this concept was enshrined in the rubric of Article II of GATT: ‘Schedules of Concessions’.
