The Most-Favored-Nation Clause

Abstract

Before turning to consider the views of several of the leading writers who have discussed the theory and practice of the most-favored-nation clause, it will he well to get clearly in mind certain circumstances which have attended its use in different periods. A knowledge of the time when a treaty was made will be found to be absolutely essential in many cases if we wish to arrive at a proper interpretation of some of its clauses.In the first place, and of primary importance, most-favored-nation treatment has now, and had in the eighteenth century, a different meaning in European policy from that which attached to it between 1825 and 1860. While European countries now give the clause a form and an interpretation corresponding approximately to that in vogue in the eighteenth century, the universalizing of favors, which, through the intricacy of modern treaty systems, that old form might be expected to entail, is largely modified by the mechanism of modern tariff policy.