A rmy generals, it is said, are always preparing to fight the last war they won. Is the World Trade Organization (WTO) in danger of following the same logic? The WTO-GATT (General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade) has all but won the war against tariffs. Tariffs on imports of OECDmanufactured goods-which account for more than two-thirds of world merchandise trade-are to average only 3.8 percent when the Uruguay Round cuts are fully implemented, with duty-free treatment applying to fully twofifths

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... of these trade flows. As in all wars, victory is never total. Tariffs on rich nations' food and clothing imports and poor nations' industrial imports are still high, as table 1 shows, but these items account for little of world trade. Moreover, the industrial tariffs of poor nations, at least, seem to be falling of their own accord. Trade is nonetheless far from unfettered. "Regulatory protection" is but one name for the tens of thousands of costraising, behind-the-border measures that continue to substantially inhibit trade. Most of these measures are seemingly innocuous when viewed individually, but tangled together they are able to significantly fragment world markets. This point is not new. The last time "globalization" was in fashion-when it was called internationalization and interdependence-Robert Baldwin wrote, "[t]he lowering of tariffs has, in effect, been like draining a swamp. The lower water level has revealed all the snags and stumps of non-tariff barriers that still have to be cleared away." 1 The intervening thirty years have witnessed completion of the swamp draining, but the stumps have started to grow; three 237 R I C H A R D E . B A L D W I N Graduate Institute of International Studies, Geneva 1. Baldwin (1970, p. 2). 2. See Baldwin and Martin (1999) for a detailed comparison of current and pre-World War II levels of openness. 3. According to common usage, regulations are mandatory, while standards are voluntary. 242 Brookings Trade Forum: 2000 Cost Time Commencement costs Continuous costs Figure 1. Compliance Costs Profile over Time 5.