Trade Barriers or Cultural Diversity? The Audiovisual Sector on Fire
Trade Barriers or Cultural Diversity? The Audiovisual Sector on Fire
This chapter examines how the World Trade Organization’s (WTO) General Agreement on Trade in Services (GATS) treats international trade in audiovisual services. Negotiations in the WTO have pitted proponents of a trade perspective (which holds that audiovisual services should be subject to progressive trade liberalization like any other sector) against those advocating a cultural perspective (which rejects the trade perspective because of audiovisual services’ special cultural significance). The chapter considers the politics of these trade negotiations and other settings (bilateral, regional, multilateral) and argues that the cultural sector must be supported without causing undue distortions to international trade. After tracing trade disputes in the audiovisual sector, it discusses the current international trading regime for the cultural industry and looks at the status of the film industry in Canada, Mexico, and Korea.
Keywords: international trade, audiovisual services, World Trade Organization, General Agreement on Trade in Services, trade liberalization, politics, trade negotiations, cultural industry, film industry, trade disputes
MIT Press Scholarship Online requires a subscription or purchase to access the full text of books within the service. Public users can however freely search the site and view the abstracts and keywords for each book and chapter.
Please, subscribe or login to access full text content.
If you think you should have access to this title, please contact your librarian.
To troubleshoot, please check our FAQs, and if you can't find the answer there, please contact us.
