national-regional construction markets are investigated within the context of the globalization of the construction industry in Chapter 5.
FORCES CONTRIBUTING TO THE GLOBALIZATION OF THE CONSTRUCTION INDUSTRY
Several important forces have, are, and will continue to promote the globalization of the construction industry. Among the more significant the forces are (1) the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) and the World Trade Organization (WTO), (2) the globalization of standards, and (3) wars and foreign aid.
GATT represented an effort to open the markets of the world to freer trade through the reductions or elimination of tariffs and other imposed impediments to trade. Following the Uruguay Round of the GATT negotiations, sufficient progress had been made to persuade the member countries to form the WTO as a successor to GATT and as a permanent organization to monitor and regulate global trade.
The Uruguay Round more than doubled (from 20 percent to 44 percent) the share of non-agricultural imports by industrialized countries that will be free of duties. The agreement also drew the two most contentious sectors in world trade, agriculture and textiles, into the WTO structure through "tariffication" of agricultural price supports and an agreement to abolish the Multifibre Arrangement on textile trade by 1 January 2005. The agreement extended GATT "competence over three increasingly important areas of the world trading system: the trade in services à ; the protection of intellectual property rights à ; and trade related investment measures. The agreement also stipulates that WTO members must phase out selective safeguard arrangements such as voluntary export restraints à and the procedures for dispute settlement have been strengthened considerably."
All existing and new international GATT trading rules now are implemented and administered through a single institutional frameworkàthe WTO. Members of th...