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weaker countries are less protected from the use (or abuse) of trade measures by the powerful for non-
trade aims.

We can also ask whether less-than-full reciprocity in tariff negotiations best serves the criterion of
distributive equity if that is taken to mean favorable treatment of developing countries in order to promote
their development. Developing countries appear to have been deterred from full reciprocity in part
because of their belief that they should be able to protect their domestic production more than developed
countries both for infant-industry reasons and because of the limitations on their capacity to adjust. There
are good arguments, however, in moving toward full reciprocity, not least of which is that larger tariff
cuts would encourage trade with other developing countries. But concerns about infant industries and
sensitive lines of production also need to be taken into account if some weight is to be given to
distributive equity. This might be accomplished by more specific measures than less-than-full reciprocity
in across-the-board tariff cuts. For example, exclusion of a proportion of tariff lines from the tariff-
cutting formula as proposed by India at one stage, makes more specific provision for branches of
production that countries may continue to want to protect. On agriculture, a similar proposal has been
made that certain “special products,” mostly crops of subsistence of semi-subsistence smallholders,
should be excluded from liberalization measures.²³

Another, still more specific measure would be revision of the rules governing the ability of
countries to alter their tariff commitments on infant-industry grounds. GATT/WTO rules have long
allowed countries to break their bound tariff commitments on these grounds, but the relevant part of
Article (XVIII A) has been largely unused. This was mostly because, when the need arose, it was possible
to invoke balance-of-payments reasons for breaching commitments, though the obligation to compensate
affected trading partners for the losses sustained from raising tariffs has surely been an added deterrent.
With conditions for use on balance-of-payments grounds made more rigorous, the issue of compensation

²³ The protection of agriculture is, as we have suggested, something of a special case. The costs of adjustment to
agricultural liberalization can be heavy in many developing countries, even threatening social cohesion. Particularly
when staple crops are affected, there may be grounds for protection that are not developmental in the familiarly
understood sense.

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