Amazon.com description: Product Description: The 1994 Uruguay Round agreement of the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade has been heralded as one of the greatest trade agreements in history. However, to some observers it is the road to economic, social and environmental ruin, while to others it represents little more than the creation of a world-dominating bureaucracy which will be controlled entirely by giant transnational corporations. This text outlines the social, political and economic climate in which the 7-year Uruguay Round negotiations took place. It examines the implications and likely outcomes of the round in the wider context of the contemporary thrust towards global free trade and economic globalization. Arguing that although global free trade is the current goal of ruling elites, there will be widespread resistance to it; that the benefits of free trade will be less and the costs more than free trade advocates claim; and that the many arguments against free trade and the sustainable and equitable alternatives to it have been deliberately ignored by mainstream economic doctrines.