Canada champions a new international approach to bring culture under trade agreements
News | 04/27/2000 4:00 am EDT
In the past, countries have tried to maintain their cultural policies by securing a "cultural exemption" from certain trade agreements, or by declining to make trade commitments in specific cultural sectors. But these approaches are increasingly fraught with problems. They do not achieve certainty, they do not foreclose trade retaliation, and they put the fate of domestic cultural policies in the hands of trade bureaucrats, who are ill equipped to deal with them.