ABSTRACT
A feature of the post-war scene to date has been a marked lowering of international trade barriers. Give or take a few years, this era of freer trade coincided with the third quarter of the twentieth century. To date, the freer trade movement has hinged on US trade agreements. Its main principles have been freer trade and non-discrimination. Freer trade was negotiated. Negotiations can succeed only where the issues can be defined. That presented no un-surmountable obstacles when negotiations were about tariff rates, quotas and the rule of non-discrimination in such matters. After the experiences of 1914-45, no major government was willing to exercise such self-restraint. The return to freer trade had to be negotiated and this implied contractual restraint. If the possibility of trade negotiations depended largely on politics, the success of the resultant agreements depended largely on economics.
