So is GATT 24 the answer to our no-deal Brexit worries?
Not according to all the experts including Chris Grey, a professor of Organisation Studies at Royal Holloway.
He writes on his blog:
“In my previous post I made reference to the recent upsurge of Brexiter interest in GATT Article XXIV. As noted there, it was mentioned as a way of avoiding the damage of no-deal Brexit by Boris Johnson in one of the leadership debates. Shortly afterwards, his claim was debunked by Mark Carney, the Governor of the Bank of England (£) but he has continued to push it in interviews this week.
Indeed, it has been debunked many, many times before – in a briefing by the trade policy specialist of the House of Commons Library, by former WTO official Peter Ungphakorn writing for the UK Trade Forum and, more recently, on his own blog, as well as, more succinctly, by Chris Morris’s BBC Reality Check, amongst many other examples. Even Liam Fox has junked it.
But however often it is debunked, and whoever does so, it shows no sign of subsiding and Brexit ideologues continue to pump out technical sounding briefings and to provide ersatz ballast for Johnson’s airy claims.”
You can read more about GATT Article XXIV here.