Safeguards

The GATT agreement has as its main objective the liberalisation of trade, and for that purpose it contains a set of rules and disciplines designed to lower barriers to trade, be these tariffs or nontariff barriers, and to eliminate them progressively. However the agreement recognises that sudden surges in imports may be very disruptive and create serious injury to a particular industry, or threaten to do so. Consequently Article XIX of GATT allows an importing country to impose border controls of a temporary nature. These controls can be imposed irrespective of whether the imports in question are being dumped, subsidised or are in some other way unfair. The imports might in fact not be being dumped, subsidised or in any sense falling foul of the other provisions of GATT against unfair trade practices. It is simply that a sudden surge of imports, whether legitimate or not, and injury to a domestic industry entitles the importing country to introduce temporary controls.