General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) Law and Legal Definition
General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (“GATT”) is a multilateral treaty entered into in 1948 by the intended members of the International Trade Organization. The purpose of GATT was to implement many of the rules and negotiated tariff reductions that would be overseen by the ITO. Afterwards, the GATT became an intergovernmental agency regulating trade policy and it was incorporated into the World Trade Organization in 1995. GATT's fundamental principles included nondiscriminatory trade among members, protection of domestic trade through the customs tariff, and agreement on tariff levels through negotiations among the contracting parties.
