This GATT Or None
The Clinton administration has started a full-court press to get a deal for a global trade treaty, known as the GATT, finished and ratified by Dec. 15 - the date by which congressional enabling authority expires.</br></br>But some of the narrow arguments that were brought into play in the abortive attempt to defeat NAFTA are being summoned in a last- ditch anti-GATT campaign on both sides of the Atlantic.</br></br>Thus, Clyde Prestowitz, president of the Economic Strategy Institute, argued in a Washington Post article last Sunday {Outlook} that although GATT will benefit some of our industries and open some foreign markets, it falls short, on balance, of its "initial objectives." He says a GATT agreement could boost the U.S. trade deficit by $10 billion to $30 billion, causing a net loss of "thousands of jobs."</br></br>The French, leading protectionists in Europe, are battling the Germans and other pro-free-trade Europeans, raising the specter of huge job losses to low-wage countries, especially in Asia, unless concessions are made in their favor, including a "cultural exception" to save the French movie industry from annihilation by Hollywood.</br></br>Against Prestowitz's vague estimate that the treaty might cost the United States $10 billion to $30 billion, the U.S. trade representative, as well as the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, a Paris-based industrial nation think tank, estimate that the benefits to world trade will be measured in the hundreds of billions.