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The task of drafting a GATT agenda has produced months of bitter feuding. The U.S. pushed particularly hard for the GATT talks to include the topic of service industries, such as insurance, engineering and telecommunications, in which GATT has never established rules. America is strong in these areas, but U.S. companies face formidable foreign barriers. Several newly industrialized countries, notably Brazil and India, were opposed to the U.S. proposal on services. They fear that multinationals with advanced technology will overrun local industries before they get a chance to develop. In the end, the ministers decided to start talks on the services issue. But those negotiations will be held separately from the main talks on trade in manufactured goods.
The delegates also agreed that the Uruguay Round will tackle the bitter issue of agricultural subsidies, which have produced what GATT officials have described as "guerrilla warfare" among the exporters of farm products. A group of 14 countries -- Australia, Argentina and Hungary, among others -- have grown incensed at having to compete with nations that heavily support their agricultural industries, notably the European Community, which spends an estimated $25 billion a year to keep its farmers in business. Said Australian Prime Minister Robert Hawke: "This is the only opportunity to end the economic madness now pervading world agricultural trade."
The European countries, particularly France, wanted to avoid talking about any farm-subsidy reduction. But the U.S., which will spend approximately $26 billion on farm aid this year, insisted on putting the issue on the agenda. The subsidies have aggravated a glut of farm products, Yeutter pointed out.
All countries agreed that GATT needs to be strengthened so that it can do a better job of eliminating the increasingly varied and subtle forms of trade restrictions. Japanese officials, for example, have imposed peculiar performance standards on imported ski equipment, claiming that Japan's snow is "different" from the stuff on European and U.S. slopes. To overcome trade barriers as calculated as those, the GATT solutions will have to be creative indeed.