ABSTRACT
Atlantic economic co-operation, as a concept, has strong roots in the plans for post-war recovery developed within the alliance between the USA and Britain during World War II. The institutional framework through which the aims of the Atlantic Charter were to be achieved was agreed at Bretton Woods. The compromise agreement reached on the structure of the International Monetary Fund and the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development is well known. The failure of the wartime plan for a pre-arranged schedule for tariff reductions is an interesting historical event in the context of Atlantic free trade. The item-by-item approach to tariff bargaining adopted at the first meeting of the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade in 1947 provided the negotiating technique for all subsequent rounds of tariff reductions until the Kennedy Round when an attempt was made to streamline the negotiating procedures.
