ABSTRACT
The world can proceed to the goal of free trade— and in 1968 one need no longer hesitate to state this as being our ultimate objective— in one of two broad ways. The fact is that twenty years of trade liberalisation have taught governments that the removal of protective barriers does not lead to widespread distress, unemployment and social unrest. In the past, when the world’s trading system was organised by a network of commercial treaties each containing the most-favoured nation clause, the only generally permitted exception to the principle of non-discrimination was the freedom to enter or form a customs union. The proponents of a free trade area among industrialised countries all agree that whatever the membership might be to begin with, the long term objective would be to include all developed and some less developed countries and thus achieve an effective system of world free trade.
