International Regimes for Trade, Investment, and Labour Mobility in the Cultural Industries

Abstract

International trade, investment, and the movement of technical and professional personnel are very important to the cultural industries. A set of bilateral co-production treaties impose strict financing, expenditure, and nationality of personnel restrictions for film and television projects that qualify for national treatment with respect to broadcast quotas and for subsidized finance from government lending agencies or tax shelters. In addition, a number of multilateral, regional, and industry-specific regimes establish general rules and procedures that govern these international transactions. We examine the success of these treaties and their probable future. Historically, the GATT concentrated on trade in goods and only with the successful termination of the Uruguay Round negotiations have the members committed to extensive rules governing trade in services. In doing so, the GATT incorporated many features of the integration of trade in services that had occurred in NAFTA and the FTA. We explore the effect on the cultural industries of the commitments to the most-favoured-nation (MFN), national treatment, and market access clauses combined with the exemptions and reservations made by Canada. Since trade in the cultural industries involves both goods and services, strong commitments not to impose conditions on investment undertaken in the trade-related investment measures of the goods section of GATT could also impact on these industries. Co-production treaties have been exempted from the MFN clause in GATT, but the exemption will lapse in 10 years. We anticipate that in the future the co-production treaties will be phased out and replaced with an industry-specific chapter in a future negotiation under the new World Trade Organization.