The Uruguay cycle began in 1986. It was the most ambitious cycle to date that hoped to extend GATT`s jurisdiction to important new areas such as services, capital, intellectual property, textiles and agriculture. 123 countries participated in the cycle. The Uruguay Round was also the first round of multilateral trade negotiations in which developing countries played an active role. [16] The General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade was a free trade agreement that eliminated tariffs and increased international trade. As the first multilateral free trade agreement, GATT governed an important part of international trade between January 1, 1948 and January 1, 1995. The agreement ended when it was replaced by the more robust World Trade Organization (WTO). The prosperity of the global economy over the past half century is largely due to the growth of world trade, which is in part the result of far-sighted officials who created the GATT. They have defined a number of procedures aimed at providing stability to the trading environment and thus facilitating the rapid growth of world trade. In the long term, GATT conference countries have helped to put the global economy on a solid footing and thus improve the livelihoods of hundreds of millions of people around the world. At the same time, 15 countries focused on negotiating a simple trade agreement. They agreed to remove trade restrictions on $10 billion or one-fifth of the world`s trade zone.

A total of 23 countries signed the GATT agreement on 30 October 1947, paving the way for its implementation on 30 June 1948. The General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) was created after the Second World War to support the global economic recovery through the reconstruction and liberalization of world trade. The main objective of the GATT was to remove barriers to international trade by reducing tariffs, quotas and subsidies. Since then, it has been replaced by the World Trade Organization (WTO). The third round took place in 1951 in Torquay, England. [13] [14] 38 countries participated in the cycle. 8,700 tariff concessions were granted for the remaining tariff on three-fourth of the tariffs that came into effect in 1948. The simultaneous rejection of the Havana Charter by the United States meant the creation of the GATT as a global federation. [15] One of GATT`s main achievements has been indiscriminate trade. Any GATT signatory should be treated like any other, known to be the nation`s most privileged principle and entered into the WTO.

The practical result was that, once a country had negotiated a tariff reduction with some other countries (usually its major trading partners), this reduction would automatically apply to all GATT signatories.