negotiations steadily reduced tariffs on manufacturing products, so that by the
end of the seventh round, known as the Tokyo round, in 1979 the international
average tariff on imports of manufactured goods was less than 5%. However,
the remaining tariffs, on agricultural produce and on textiles, not only
remained high, but were of particular concern to theThird Worlddeveloping
countries who needed to export these products to the developed economies of
theFirst Worldto earn hard currency and to counterbalance their own
imports of manufactured goods. Agricultural tariffs were politically extremely
sensitive because the two biggest markets for export of cheap food by Third
World economies (and some developed but agriculturally-intensive economies
like New Zealand) are theEuropean Union (EU)and the USA. In both
these areas long-term and politically entrenched policies, the Common
Agricultural Policy in the EU and the tradition of farm subsidies dating from
the 1930s depression in the USA, protect domestic farmers from competition.
The last round of GATT negotiations, which started in Uruguay in 1986, had
still not made real progress in reducing these tariffs by the early 1990s, and even
threatened to break down completely leading to a trade war. The problem
remained to bedevil the early years of its successor organization, theWorld
Trade Organization (WTO)at the turn of the century. It will always be
unpopular domestically for the governments of EU countries and the USA to
support cuts in their own systems of agricultural protection, and it is unclear
what progress can be made in this area. Naturally this leads to a more or less
justified claim by the Third World that the leading economies were all in
favour of free trade when it was in their own interest, but indifferent to it as
soon as it threatened to harm their own producers. Rivalries between some
First World economies, notably the USA and the EU, are now played out at in
the WTO, with a good deal of rather cynical coalition-building with particu-
larly convenient producer countries.
Gaullism
Gaullism is a post-war French political movement originated by General
Charlesde Gaulle, but by no means limited to his own views, or parties
founded by him. It nowadays represents perhaps the major conservative force
in French politics. There have been several Gaullist parties, the names of which
change from time to time, starting with the party de Gaulle founded at the end
of the Second World War, the RPF; the current version, the Rassemblement
pour la Re ́publique (RPR), is headed by Jacques Chirac. The prime minister-
ship of Chirac in the mid-1980s, under a socialist president, Franc ̧oisMitter-
rand, whose presidential term overlapped parliamentary elections which the
right had won (a period known ascohabitation) demonstrated the flexibility
of Gaullist politics, as well as the strength of the constitution. Chirac was still
Gaullism