Multilateral Trade Bargaining: A First Look at the GATT Bargaining Records

This paper empirically examines recently declassified data from the GATT/WTO on tariff bargaining. Focusing on the Torquay Round (1950-51), we document six stylized facts about these interconnected high-stakes international negotiations. Several of these stylized facts lend support to two features that are seen by GATT practitioners and legal scholars as hallmarks of the tariff bargaining that occurred in the early GATT rounds, namely, a surprising lack of strategic behavior among the participating governments and an important multilateral element to the bilateral bargains. We suggest that these features can be understood as emerging from a tariff bargaining forum that emphasizes the GATT pillars of MFN and multilateral reciprocity, and we offer evidence that the relaxation of strict bilateral reciprocity facilitated by the GATT multilateral bargaining forum was important to the success of the GATT approach.