ABSTRACT
By the late 1980s, it became apparent that governments around the world understood the significance of services as a tradable commodity in the global economy. For the next 7.5 years, during what is known as the Uruguay Round of negotiations, the contracting parties engaged in talks that produced a multilateral framework that now includes measures governing trade in services and established the World Trade Organization. The international-level institutions governing international trade in services and goods are set by national-level governments. The liberalization of trade in services was addressed during the Uruguay Round of multilateral trade negotiations, which lasted from September 1986 in Punta del Este, Uruguay, to April 1994 in Marrakesh, Morocco. The key set of measures for trade in services that came out of the Uruguay Round was the General Agreement on Trade in Services. To fully understand the existing trade system, it is first necessary to briefly underscore the historical evolution of the international trade framework.
