General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade

GATT Full Form in English, letter by letter

GATT is the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade, the 1947 treaty that set world trade rules until the WTO replaced it in 1995.

GATT Full Form in Indian Languages

Anyone reading about tariffs or the WTO eventually meets GATT, the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade. It is written in English even in Indian-language news, and the cards below show how each language handles the name.

What GATT was and when it began

The General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade was signed in Geneva on 30 October 1947 by 23 countries, India among them, and took effect on 1 January 1948. It was never meant to be permanent. Negotiators expected an International Trade Organisation to take over shortly.

That organisation never arrived. The Havana Charter of 1948 was never ratified by the United States, which left GATT, an agreement rather than an institution, to run the global trading system for 47 years.

The aim was plain: avoid a repeat of the tariff and quota wars of the 1930s, which had deepened the Great Depression. Successive negotiating rounds cut tariffs on manufactured goods sharply, from high post-war levels to low single digits in rich countries by the 1990s.

The rules the agreement ran on

Two principles did most of the work. Most Favoured Nation meant any tariff concession given to one member had to be given to all, so there were no secret favourites. National Treatment meant an imported good, once through customs, had to be taxed and regulated like a domestic one.

Members also 'bound' their rates in schedules. Cutting below a bound ceiling was free, while raising above it invited retaliation. Agriculture and textiles stayed largely outside real discipline for decades: farm subsidies and the Multi-Fibre Arrangement kept those sectors protected until 1995 and 2005 respectively.

There were eight negotiating rounds, from Geneva in 1947 through Annecy, Torquay, the Dillon Round, the Kennedy Round and the Tokyo Round to the marathon Uruguay Round. The pattern was usually the same: the big trading nations traded concessions and everyone else received the same terms under MFN.

The Uruguay Round and the birth of the WTO

Launched at Punta del Este in 1986 and concluded at Marrakesh in April 1994, the Uruguay Round was the longest trade negotiation in history. It produced the Marrakesh Agreement and with it the World Trade Organisation, which opened on 1 January 1995.

GATT itself did not vanish. GATT 1994 remains the WTO's rulebook for trade in goods, while the round added two new pillars: GATS for services and TRIPS for intellectual property. Anything decided after 1995 is technically WTO business, still applying GATT text.

India was an original GATT signatory and a founding WTO member. The change mattered at home. Before the 1991 liberalisation, Indian peak tariffs ran far above 100%. Rates then fell steadily, and the bound rates India accepted at the WTO set the upper limits that later governments work within.

GATT in Indian exams and in today's trade news

It is a reliable one-mark question. GATT's year (1947), its birthplace (Geneva) and the round that created the WTO (Uruguay) recur in UPSC, SSC and banking papers. The usual trap is calling GATT an organisation. It was only ever an agreement, with a small secretariat that grew up around it.

It also explains current headlines. The Doha Development Round, launched in 2001 to finish unfinished business on agriculture and tariffs, has made little progress for years. Disputes over steel tariffs, subsidies and carbon border taxes are still argued using GATT 1994 articles, such as the bar on discriminating between trading partners.

When a news item says a country has 'filed a case at the WTO', the legal text applied is often the General Agreement. A document signed in 1947 is still doing daily work.

GATT, WTO and look-alike terms

GATT is often confused with GATS (General Agreement on Trade in Services) and TRIPS (Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights). All three sit under the WTO today, but only GATT covers trade in goods.

Another mix-up is between GATT and the WTO's own dispute system. Under the old GATT, a losing party could block a ruling. Since 1995 the Dispute Settlement Body adopts rulings automatically unless every member rejects them, though the Appellate Body has been unable to hear appeals since December 2019 because members could not agree on new appointments.

GATT began as a stopgap in 1947 and ended up as the foundation of the modern trading system. Remember the year, the city, the eight rounds and the Uruguay Round that produced the WTO, and most exam questions on it become easy. For trade news, remember that its rules on tariffs and non-discrimination are still in force.

GATT Full Form: Common Questions