State Trading and Trade Liberalization

The past three decades have been marked by an unprecedented liberalization of trade among the western industrialized countries. The liberalization efforts have primarily focussed on discriminatory or protective rules which governments apply to regulate the trade of private enterprises. Some attention, however, has also been paid to discriminatory or protective measures implemented through state-trading enterprises. The purpose of this paper is to examine and evaluate the approaches to the liberalization of the trade conducted by such enterprises under the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT), the Convention establishing the European Free Trade Association (EFTA) and the Treaty establishing the European Economic Communities (EEC).