ABSTRACT
The Uruguay Round of the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) was the most comprehensive round in the succession of multilateral trade talks, both in scope and duration. Ironically, its ambitious agenda was set up and had to be negotiated during a time when the GATT system of multilateral and nondiscriminatory trade policy was facing two serious challenges: an increasing nontariff protectionism by industrial countries and a new wave of regionalism, visible in the proliferation of new trading blocs around the globe as well as in the extension and deepening of existing ones.
