ROMSO Cyprus Knowledge Base
"The Kennedy Round"
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The Kennedy Round, which lasted from 1964 to 1967, was the sixth round of negotiations in GATT and the longest until then. It was named after President John Fitzgerald Kennedy, who obtained the Trade Expansion Act in 1962, a move that was considered the main cause of success.
The Kennedy round brought the tariffs much more than the GATT rounds until then, although the next round, Tokyo Round, resulted in a $300 billion reduction compared to 40 billion in the Kennedy round. The round was also the first time to reduce tariff trade barriers. Most of the reductions in the Canadian round were about 50% of the original tariff and were administered according to the linear reduction method.
Opening the tour and innovation in it
The official decision to open in the Kennedy round was made at the end of a singing conference by the GATT on May 21, 1963. The ministers established the beginning of the tour in 1964, and that in the round, representatives of many countries will be participating in the lowering of mutual trade barriers, both for industrial goods and agricultural products. The decision explicitly intended to ensure agricultural products access to global markets, and also ordered the lowering of tariffs and lowering unlawful trade barriers (NTB’s). The reduction of tariffs was intended to be made in general, when each country lowers its tariffs by a number of percent similar to the rest of the countries (the linear method). It was decided to grant exemptions in as few cases as possible and to demand justification from any country for any exceptional product area.
The explicit reference to unlawful trade barriers stems from the treatment of these barriers, whose relative importance rose as the global tariff level fell. After the first five GATT rounds, in which no tariffs were treated, they were already more important than when the GATT was founded, and it was expected to grow even further after the current round was reduced. In addition, administrative and technical instructions are intended to be handled, customs computation practices, purchasing policies by states, internal taxes, measures against the float (Anti-Dumping) and quantitative restrictions.
The intention to lower tariffs on agricultural products was a renewal in the Canadian round. In addition, the deliberate reference in the decision to developing countries was innovative.
Another expansion in the field of patients by GATT was in an attempt to incorporate concentrated communist economies in the GATT system. The central decision making in Eastern Europe has shown that the purchase of products has been made or rejected in a given case. In addition, the concerns of the countries of the East are boycotting or other currency have encouraged them to pay relatively expensive prices within the eastern bloc because of the confidence that they can continue purchases within the bloc without breaks.
The main players
The main players in the Canadian round were the United States and the European Community. For the first time since World War II, the United States has entered into negotiations with an economic power approaching its power. The European holdings prevented the U.S. from sacrificing its economic resources for the benefit of the European community, as it was in the past, and the clash between the two economic powers contributed to raising doubts at the time regarding the Western alliance against the Soviet Union and its carriers, including doubts about the continued existence of NATO.
structurally, the rise of the European community threatened the GATT in principle. The GATT is intended to promote free trade around the world on the basis of the most preferred state principle (MFN), but the European community is based on regionals, which provides trade benefits for European countries in its own free trade area, and ties to American trade. The level of success in reducing tariffs in the Canadian round was to mark what direction global trade is advancing: for general trade, or for a number of areas