The General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT)
The General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) originated from the 1944 Bretton Woods Conference, which laid the foundations for the post-World War II financial system and established two key institutions:
Parallel negotiations were conducted on a multilateral agreement for reciprocal reductions in tariff barriers. These negotiations resulted in the signing of the GATT on November 30, 1947. It entered into force on January 1, 1948.
The GATT sponsored eight rounds of multilateral trade negotiations. The Uruguay Round, conducted from 1987 to 1994, culminated in the Marrakesh Agreement, which established the World Trade Organization (WTO) in 1994. The WTO incorporates the principles of the GATT.
While the WTO replaced GATT as an international organisation, the General Agreement still exists as the WTO’s umbrella treaty for trade in goods, updated as a result of the Uruguay Round negotiations. Trade lawyers distinguish between GATT 1994, the updated parts of GATT, and GATT 1947, the original agreement which is still the heart of GATT 1994.
See more information on the GATT on the WTO website.
For detailed information on the history and functioning of the GATT, see the following books:
A History of Law and Lawyers in the GATT/WTO: The Development of the Rule of Law in the Multilateral Trading System by Call Number: eBookPublication Date: CUP, 2015
Modern GATT law : a treatise on the law and political economy of the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade and other World Trade Organisation Agreements by Call Number: KC 645 BHAL 2 volsPublication Date: Sweet & Maxwell, 2013
GATT Documents
Stanford University's GATT Digital Library 1947-1994 (UniMelb staff & students) provides access to over 59,000 documents by and about the GATT.
All official documents issued under the GATT are available from the GATT Documents webpage on the WTO website (open access).
The General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) 1994 (open access) as part of the WTO Analytical Index provides a guide to the interpretation and application of the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade, drawn from official documentary sources of the GATT.