The name is absent

12

negotiations on tariff reductions, delegations still sought to assure themselves that all parties had made
their “appropriate contributions.”

Again, however, the initial usefulness of the criterion appears to have worked out much less
satisfactorily in the Uruguay Round when relations between developed and developing countries are
considered. The large differences among these groups of countries in industrial structures and in inherited
trade policies (not to mention disparities in bargaining power) made for substantial differences in the
content of the bargains struck. So, compared with the bargain struck among developed industrial
countries, there was evidently less comparability in the negotiated changes in measures and more
uncertainty about the outcomes measured in terms of the consequent expansion in exports.

Still, understood as rough equivalence, the criterion remains important. It counters the nationalist
sentiment that can breed mutual mistrust and impede trade cooperation. For such cooperation, it is
important that states perceive themselves as being treated as equal, and independent, entities. In so far as
the gains in market access can be measured, there is an objective means of assuring every state that it has
been so treated. But it has to be admitted that there is great difficulty in translating the criterion into
measurable trade outcomes. It is only expected equality of opportunity, not equality of outcome that can
be the basis of negotiations among market economies. And if the outcome does not correspond at all to
expectations, the sense of fairness is not fulfilled.

3.2 Initial conditions

Even if equivalent gains in market access could be realized in the rounds of multilateral trade
negotiations, that would not assure countries of equality of opportunity in regard to market access.
Countries enter into negotiations with many differences in the level and profile of their trade barriers, and
equivalent reductions in trade barriers do not eliminate these differences. However, successive rounds of
negotiations narrow the absolute differences and may eventually render them unimportant. This has been
happening among the developed countries since WWII in non-agricultural goods and has begun more
recently in some services.

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