Principle of Mutual Advantage as a Legal Basis of the GATT/WOT

Purpose: The objective of this article is to study the principle of mutual advantage as a legal basis of the GATT/WTO. Design/methodology/approach: The analysis is primarily based on initial sources of the international law. The article uses general scientific methods such as: analysis and synthesis, system structural, formal logical, historical methods, and special methods: legal dogmatic, comparative legal. Findings: The study has shown that the Marrakesh Agreement Establishing the WTO 1994 and annexes thereto are based, among others, on the principle of mutual advantage that had undergone a long way of development as one of the principles of the international trade, and the WTO institutional mechanisms provide for compliance with it in the interstate relations. However, even today there appear contradictions between the states concerning understanding and implementation of the principle of mutual advantage. The example is the last WTO round Doha Development Agenda that cannot come to the end due to contradictions between the states concerning implementation of the principle of mutual advantage. Researchlimitations/implications: The principle of mutual advantage shall be studied in the activities of other international economic organizations. Social implications: Social implications consist in attracting the attention of the world community to the necessity to comply with the principle of mutual advantage in the international trade, to the problems of violation of the principle in the international trade, to the cases of the international trade non-equivalence and its unfair consequences. Originality/value: The article for the first time provides an investigation of the principle of the international economic right the principle of mutual advantage in the Constitution and practice of the World Trade Organization. This study found out the formalization of the principle in the WTO Constitution and all annexes there to, and also that the contradictions on understanding and implementation of the principle of mutual advantage by the countries often presented barriers to the international trade.