ABSTRACT
Longstanding merchandise trade barriers remain intractable, and new barriers are being erected to offset exchange rate misalignments and to pursue neo-mercantilist trade strategies. Trade, finance, and debt problems evoke protectionist pressures in developed and developing countries alike and seem immune to resolution through the procedures set out in the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade. The benefits of open markets and free trade principles have been widely accepted as US public policy since 1934. In that year—in response to the global depression in general and collapse of world trade in particular —the Congress enacted the Reciprocal Trade Agreements Act. "Reciprocity" has been a central theme of US trade policy since the passage of the Reciprocal Trade Agreements Act of 1934, and has been a pillar of US participation in the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade system. In an important sense, reciprocity is a relative term defined by negotiation, that is, whatever bargain is struck is by its nature reciprocal.
