Let them Eat Cake? The European Union, United States, and ‘Special and Differential Treatment’ in the GATT/WTO Regime.

The multilateral trade regime has long been the creature of its two largest markets, the United States and the European Union (EU). Yet these two giants have occasionally made concessions to developing countries in the form of special and differential treatment (S&D), which provides preferences that contravene free trade rules. This is not surprising per se; both the EU and United States recognize the role of trade in helping poor countries achieve development goals. But what is more surprising is the extent of EU-US agreement on this front. We might have expected the end of the Cold War to expose underlying differences between presumed European support for and American skepticism of preferential treatment of developing countries. Not only did this split not occur; the opposite happened. The EU and United States built a solid consensus on reducing and reorienting S&D in the GATT/WTO regimeâ€"a consensus that, though tested, has to date held firm.This paper explores this surprising EU and US policy convergence in two parts. First, it addresses the conceptual and empirical questions of what it means for EU and US S&D policies to be ‘aligned.’ It defines their policy ideal points as a function of three factors: general material interests (national security and prosperity); specific sectoral interests; and causal and/or normative beliefs. Through a content analysis of EU and US published policy agendas vis-à-vis S&D, the paper traces the convergence of their ideal points as a function of the convergence in the relative salience of these different factors for each.Second, the paper identifies the structural and unit-level factors that explain their growing policy alignment from the 1970s to today. It shows that we can understand EU-US convergence to some extent as a function of broad systemic trendsâ€"namely, the growing gap between ‘emerging’ and ‘least-developed’ (i.e., African) countries, and the plummeting strategic importance of the latter after the end of the Cold War. However, perhaps more important were changes within Europeâ€"specifically, the growing strength of the liberal-technocratic Commission and fading memories of colonial ruleâ€"which brought the EU closer to the American position over time.The paper provides insight into the ‘where do we go from here’ question after the collapse of WTO talks in the summer of 2006. The status quo bargain on S&D becomes even more important now that the ‘Doha Development Agenda” has receded, leaving the world’s poorest countries with uncertain multilateral guarantees of access to Western markets and ever-greater competition from more successful developing countries. This paper’s analysis will generate a set of predictions regarding the status of S&D, and EU and US support thereof, in an uncertain future for the WTO. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]