Procedures for intersessional administration of the General Agreement

The General Agreement does not specifically provide for any organization for its administration. Article XXV provides that the contracting parties shall meet from time to time to consider matters arising out of the application of the agreement, but does not provide any mechanism for administering the agreement during the period when the Contracting Parties are not in session. As a result of discussions at their Sixth Session in 1951, the Contracting Parties established-on an experimental basisthe ad hoc Committee for Agenda and Intersessional Business to deal with matters that might require immediate action during the period between the sessions of the Contracting Parties. This arrangement for intersessional administration of the agreement-modified somewhat at the Ninth Session in 1954-55-has since been continued.

The Intersessional Committee, as it is now termed, is authorized to consider matters that require urgent action between sessions, but for which the Contracting Parties have made no special arrangements. The Intersessional Committee also is authorized to establish working parties to consider special problems, and may request the convening of special sessions of the Contracting Parties to consider matters that require their immediate attention. The Committee is also directed to meet 4 to 6 weeks before the opening of each regular session of the Contracting Parties, to prepare the agenda and order of business.

Members of the Committee are selected in such a manner as to insure that the Committee will be representative of the broad geographical areas to which the contracting parties belong and of the different degrees of economic development and divergent economic interests that are to be found among them. At their 11th Session the Contracting Parties reconstituted the Committee and increased its membership from 17 to 18 contracting parties. This they did by electing 17 members and co-opting Denmark. The following contracting parties were elected to the Intersessional Committee: Australia, Belgium, Brazil, Canada, Chile, France, the Federal Republic of Germany, Greece, India, Indonesia, Italy, Norway, Pakistan, Peru, the Federation of Rhodesia and Nyasaland, the United Kingdom, and the United States.

Because of the rapid progress that six European countries made after the close of the 11th Session in drafting a treaty looking toward the formation of a Common Market, the Intersessional Committee decided to consider questions relating to the proposed arrangement at its meeting in April 1957.51 Because of this important change in the agenda for the meeting, the Committee co-opted at their request the following contracting parties for the discussion on the Common Market: Austria,

The contracting parties involved in the arrangements for the Common Market are Belgium, France, the Federal Republic of Germany, Italy, Luxembourg, and the Netherlands. For a detailed discussion of the Common Market, see ch. 4 of this report.

Ceylon, Cuba, Czechoslovakia, the Dominican Republic, Japan, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, New Zealand, and the Union of South Africa. Represented at the meeting by observers were the following countries that are not contracting parties to the General Agreement: Ghana (formerly the British Crown Colony of the Gold Coast), Portugal, Switzerland, and Yugoslavia.

Financial and budgetary matters

At their 11th Session, the Contracting Parties approved the audit of the 1955 accounts and the report by the Executive Secretary on the financing of the 1956 budget. They also adopted an estimated budget of $451,600 for 1957, the United States contribution to which was $74,520. As has been true for the past 4 years, the budget estimate for the year ahead (1957) was higher than that for the previous year. The higher budget resulted from a permanent increase in the workload of the GATT Secretariat.

During the 10th Session, considerable sentiment developed for a review of the then existing system of computing financial contributions by the contracting parties to the General Agreement. Originally, contributions were based on the shares of each of the contracting parties in the total foreign trade of the Contracting Parties during the period 1949-53. As important changes have taken place since then in the respective trade shares of individual contracting parties, the Contracting Parties agreed to examine at their next session the question of revising the scale of contributions.

At the 11th Session the Contracting Parties revised the scale of contributions for the 1957 budget. The revised scale was based on the total external trade of the Contracting Parties for 1953-55-the latest 3 years for which adequate statistics were available. In addition, the Contracting Parties specified a minimum contribution of $2,000 for those individual contracting parties whose share of the total trade of the Contracting Parties was less than 0.55 percent. The Contracting Parties also decided that, before each annual session, the Secretariat should prepare a draft scale of contributions based on the total foreign trade of the Contracting Parties during the last 3 consecutive years for which adequate statistics were available. On the basis of this draft, the Contracting Parties will decide whether changes in the shares of individual contracting parties in the total trade of the Contracting Parties have been significant enough to require an adjustment of the scale of contributions for the following

year.

Attendance of foreign ministers at sessions of the Contracting Parties

In September 1956 the Executive Secretary of the Contracting Parties proposed to the Intersessional Committee that the foreign ministers of the contracting parties attend the 11th Session and succeeding sessions.

In his opinion, attendance of the foreign ministers would make possible a wider exchange of views than was otherwise possible and would contribute to a more effective operation of the General Agreement. As a result of inquiries, however, it was found that such a ministerial meeting could not be arranged for the 11th Session.

During the 11th Session the Contracting Parties agreed that meetings of the foreign ministers, held in the early stages of succeeding sessions, would be highly advantageous. They decided, therefore, to arrange for such a ministerial meeting at their 12th Session in 1957, the ministers themselves to decide at that time whether they would hold meetings at subsequent sessions.

Chapter 3

Actions of the United States Relating to Its Trade Agreements Program

UNITED STATES TRADE-AGREEMENT OBLIGATIONS

On June 30, 1957, the United States was a party to trade agreements with 41 countries, which agreements it had negotiated under the authority of the Trade Agreements Act, as amended and extended.1 These countries may be considered in two groups.

2

1. The first group consists of 33 countries that were contracting parties to the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade on the aforementioned date. These countries, together with the dates on which the United States gave effect to the tariff concessions that it had initially negotiated with them, are listed below:

Canada 1
Ceylon....

-July 30, 1948 | Germany (Federal Republic)..Oct. 1, 1951

See footnotes at end of tabulation.

France 1.

-Jan. 1, 1948

1 For more detailed data on the trade agreements that the United States has concluded with foreign countries, see U. S. Tariff Commission, Trade Agreements Manual: A Summary of Selected Data Relating to Trade Agreements That the United States Has Negotiated Since 1934, 2d ed., 1957 [processed].

2 Four countries withdrew from the General Agreement between October 30, 1947, and June 30, 1957-the Republic of China, Lebanon, Liberia, and Syria. On June 30, 1957, a total of 35 countries, including the United States, were contracting parties to the General Agreement. Although Czechoslovakia was a contracting party to the agreement on that date, neither Czechoslovakia nor the United States had any obligations to the other under the agreement. On September 29, 1951, the United States, with the permission of the Contracting Parties, suspended all its obligations to Czechoslovakia under the General Agreement. Subsequently, effective November 2, 1951, the United States suspended the application of trade-agreement concessions to imports from Czechoslovakia.

1 The bilateral trade agreements that the United States had previously concluded with these countries have been either suspended or terminated.

"The Netherlands negotiated concessions on behalf of the Netherlands Indies at Geneva in 1947. On Feb. 24, 1950, the Contracting Parties recognized the United States of Indonesia (now the Republic of Indonesia) as a contracting party to the General Agreement in its own right.

The Federation of Rhodesia and Nyasaland, composed of Southern Rhodesia, Northern Rhodesia, and Nyasaland, formally came into existence on Sept. 3, 1953. On Oct. 30, 1953, it succeeded to the status of Southern Rhodesia as a contracting party to the General Agreement, and to the interests of Northern Rhodesia and Nyasaland, to which the agreement previously had applied as areas for which the United Kingdom had international responsibility.

2. The second group consists of those 8 countries that had trade agreements with the United States but were not contracting parties to the General Agreement. These countries, together with the effective dates of the respective bilateral trade agreements, are as follows:

1 A supplementary trade agreement between the United States and Switzerland became effective July 11, 1955.

A supplementary trade agreement between the United States and Venezuela became effective Oct. 11, 1952.

During the period covered by this report, the United States continued— as required by section 5 of the Trade Agreements Extension Act of 1951-to suspend the application to imports from Communist-controlled countries or areas, of reduced rates of duty and import tax established pursuant to any trade agreement. The United States also continuedpursuant to section 11 of the extension act of 1951-to prohibit the entry, or withdrawal from warehouse, for consumption, of specified furs that are the product of the Soviet Union or of Communist China.3

For details of United States action under secs. 5 and 11 of the Trade Agreements Extension Act of 1951, see Operation of the Trade Agreements Program (sixth report), pp. 77-78.