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142 Communication, Commerce and Power

In the mid-1980s, the US and its GAIT allies publicly admonished
a small number of 'radical,' 'hardline' and 'selfish' LDCs for their
opposition to an emerging GAIT agreement that apparently would
provide 'moderate' LDCs with new opportunities to access First
World markets. This group of hold-outs- Brazil, India, Argentina,
Cuba, Egypt, Nicaragua, Nigeria, Peru, Tanzania and Yugoslavia-
was commonly referred to as the Group of Ten, while the moderate
LDCs were called the Group of Twenty (led by Jamaica and Colom-
bia). However, from this divisive environment, fears among the
Group of Twenty of prospective and exclusionary bilateral agree-
ments, and the gradual recognition by First World officials that
development issues should be addressed, the emergence of a 'common
working platform' between Brazil, India and the EC was achieved on
the eve of the Punta del Este Uruguay Round meeting in 1986. 41
During the Uruguay Round negotiations, US officials rarely
applied either a 'carrot' or a 'stick' in efforts to bring about a services
agreement: they used both. In 1988, the US Congress passed the
Omnibus Trade and Competitiveness Act. As an extension of Section
301 of the US Trade Act of 1974 (revised in 1984), which originally
enabled the US government to challenge and retaliate against 'unfair
trade practices' under GAIT procedures, the new so-called Super-301
enabled Congress to act against foreign countries for practices not
covered by the GAIT. Another significant modification was the so-
called Special-301 provision. Unlike Super-301, Special-301 specific-
ally addresses intellectual property rights. Rather than the GAIT
method of negotiating agreements based on mutual trade concessions,
Super-301 and Special-301 were designed to compel foreign govern-
ments to make specified trade concessions or accept the unilateral
suspension of their existing access to US markets. Moreover, retali-
atory measures could be imposed on an entire country, rather than
just an offending industry as prescribed in the original 1974 Act.
Super/Special-301 assigns the USTR the task of identifying countries
and trade blocs whose laws and/or practices will probably hamper
potential American exports. Either a domestic party or the USTR
could launch a complaint under these new provisions.
In both empowering the USTR to present an annual report to
Congress on 'priority' countries and enabling its officials to initiate
complaints independently, Congress provided the private sector with a
comprehensive research service while shielding those US-based cor-
porations reluctant to launch complaints against host countries. After
these priority countries and their offensive practices are identified,