World Trade Organization
INTRODUCTION
The World Trade Organization (WTO) is an international organization designed to supervise and liberalize international trade. The WTO came into being on January 1, 1995, and is the successor to the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT), which was created in 1947.
The World Trade Organization deals with the rules of trade between nations at a near-global level; it is responsible for negotiating and implementing new trade agreements, and is in charge of policing member countries’ adherence to all the WTO agreements, signed by the bulk of the world’s trading nations and ratified in their parliaments.
Essentially, the WTO is a place where member governments go, to try to sort out the trade problems they face with each other. The WTO was born out of negotiations, and everything the WTO does is the result of negotiations. The bulk of the WTO's current work comes from the 1986-94 negotiations called the Uruguay Round and earlier negotiations under the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT). The WTO is currently the host to new negotiations, under the “Doha Development Agenda” launched in 2001.
Where countries have faced trade barriers and wanted them lowered, the negotiations have helped to liberalize trade, but the WTO is not just about liberalizing trade, and in some circumstances its rules support maintaining trade barriers, to protect consumers or prevent the spread of disease.
The WTO is governed by a Ministerial Conference, which meets every two years; a General Council, which implements the conference’s policy decisions and is responsible for a day-to-day administration; and a director-general, who is appointed by the Ministerial Conference. The WTO’s headquarters are in Geneva, Switzerland after being moved several times in its history.
PRINCIPLES OF THE TRADING SYSTEM
The WTO establishes a framework for trade policies; it does not...
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