占領下日独に対する最恵国待遇供与問題

抄録

As the result of the World War II, the German government ceased to exist; Germany was occupied and governed directly by the occupation authorities of the United States, Great Britain, France and the Soviet Union. The Japanese government continued to exist; Japan was occupied and indirectly controlled by SCAP/GHQ whose personnel were predominantly American. The occupation of Japan by the Allied Powers was in substance a unitary occupation by the United States.
The United States, as an occupying country, tried to associate the occupied Japan and Germany with the International Trade Organization (ITO) and/or the-General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT), and thereby secure reciprocal most-favored-nation treatment for these occupied areas. Many countries, however, were opposed to such attempts on the grounds that the issue of most-favored-nation treatment should be dealt with in appropriate Allied control councils, and ultimately in a peace treaty.
Nevertheless, the United States efforts bore certain fruis with regard to Germany. In mid-1948, in connection with the Marshall aid agreements, West European countries granted most-favored-nation status to Western Germany in an exchange of notes with the United States. This success was followed, in September 1948, at the second Session of the Contracting Parties to GATT, by a multilateral arrangement outside GATT framework, whereby countries signatory to it agreed to grant most-favored-nation treatment to Western Germany on a reciprocal basis. West Germany was also invited to the Torquay tariff negotiations of GATT, and given an opportunity to accede to it. However, similar efforts by the United States with regard to Japan all failed. Why did these differences occur?
Whereas Japan regained sovereign status after the making and coming into effect of the San Francisco Peace Treaty, Germany made no peace treaty. Germany was recreated as a divided country. The differences in the political climate in Asia and Europe, and consequently in the ways in which Japan and Germany regained independence seem to have affected their acquisition of most-favored-nation treatment and entry to GATT. West European support for West German accession to GATT was in line with the grand strategy of the West to create a West German State in a context of growing cold war tensions in Europe. West Germany was an integral part of Europe economically, politically, strategically for the West. In contrast, there was no corresponding support by the West European countries for Japanese accession to GATT. The issue of most-favored-nation treatment for Japan was then made an issue for the peace treaty; and no country except the United States supported most-favored-nation status for Japan in the process of peace-treaty making.