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138 Communication, Commerce and Power

Development (OECD) initiated a general rethinking of services
through its coordination of an international conference on long-term
changes in the global economy. In the US, this ground-breaking
conference and its subsequent report were much-welcomed develop-
ments.25 In directly associating service transactions with international
trade, a new coalition of diverse corporate interests could be mobil-
ized and greater weight could be provided to their otherwise isolated
appeals for the liberalization of various activities. Moreover, from a
strategic perspective, these corporations were empowered with a new
discursive weapon through which they could relate isolated market
access and reciprocity problems with a more general crusade against
'pr<;>tectionism.'
Among American state officials, the services issue-as-trade-issue
equation provided the USTR with greater responsibilities. Related
to the enthusiasm of USTR officials for adopting-the services trade
issue was the emergence of academic and popular publications espous-
ing an emerging so-called 'post-industrial society.' 26 Elected members
of the US Congress and executive branch officials acknowledged both
the economic growth prospects of the relatively advanced US service
sector and its potential role in providing the US with a leadership
position in the emerging international information economy. As such,
American state officials began to promote the idea that the economic
revitalization of the US was attainable through the internationaliza-
tion of US-based service sector activities. 27
From the early 1970s, various government agencies struck commit-
tees and commissioned studies with the participation of US-based
TNCs. In formulating the 1974 Trade Act, for example, private sector
input resulted in the recognition of service issues as potential trade
issues and the option of taking unilateral action against countries
impeding service sector trade. In 1984, a USTR study on the growing
role of services in the international economy (which included a 56-
page appendix containing previously undocumented statistics on
GAIT member service activities) was submitted to the GATT? 8
Not only did this constitute the first comprehensive American state
study on services submitted to the multilateral trade organization, in
general terms it established national policy objectives for the services
trade issue. 29 Other advanced industrialized countries subsequently
undertook detailed studies of their domestic service activities while
LDCs generally did not. Neither the 1984 USTR study, nor any major
private or public sector study preceding it, had addressed the issue of
the relationship of services to LDC development concerns. In the