Abstract
The final draft of the General Agreement on Tariffs & Trade (GATT), approved last December in Geneva and top-heavy with impenetrable trade jargon, has begun moving through the Senate Finance Committee. Last week, a committee hearing aired reactions to the pact's once-controversial R&D provisions. Those provisions had set off last-minute fireworks during the December trade talks (C&EN, Jan. 3, page 13). After frantic negotiations in Geneva, the U.S. delegation succeeded in convincing the other negotiators that it didn't really want what it had apparently supported for many months: limits on government support for research with industry or for research tied to industrial needs in government or academic labs. The whole caper underscored the perceptual mismatch between trade and technology policymakers in both the Clinton and Bush Administrations. Judging by testimony at the hearing from former National Science Foundation director Erich Bloch and from Mary L. Good, undersecretary for technology at the Commerc...
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