Although the past decade has carried a great deal of news and coverage of the World Trade Organization (WTO), few people are truly aware of the organization’s function or the scope of its mission. It often appears to be just another one of the structureless bureaucracies that handle the details of todays modern life. However, the WTO is involved in issues ranging from disputes over steel manufacturing in Japan to China’s telecommunications system and textile manufacturing in African nations to the United States’ problems relating to the integration of U.S. regulations with those of the international community. It is the mission of the WTO to “settle” such international disputes in a manner that takes all parties’ interests into consideration.
Its architects declared it to be a triumph and a new dawn for trade. Signatories to the April 1994 agreement on world trade--which concluded seven years of talks in the Uruguay Round described their achievement in glowing terms. As The Economist (8/6/94) noted “ Such immodesty was forgivable. Their agreement extends global rules to areas such as services, farming and intellectual property. No less important, governments promised to create a new institution, more powerful than the GATT it will replace, to supervise the new order” (pp. 16).
The Founding of and Debate Over the World Trade Organization
The World Trade Organization is a relatively new institution. Its first meeting took place in Singapore in December of 1996 but served as a celebration of the founding of the organization rather than a working meeting. According to Desai (1996), the founders were determined that contention between developing countries and the industrial nations would be avoided in Singapore and only the actua...
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...ess to domestic markets. The third GATT principle is "transparency," which requires that any trade protection be obvious and quantifiable--like a tariff. Finally, in addition to these rules, the WTO has the authority to resolve disputes and to issue penalties and sanctions. It has also had its jurisdiction enlarged beyond overseeing the manufacturing policies that affect trade to include service industries such as banking, insurance, travel, and management consulting. Such service operations now have the same GATT policies applied to them that were applied to manufacturing. Patents, trademarks, and copyrights, the bedrock of national policies that restrict trade in intellectual property, now fall under the WTO's jurisdiction. Investment issues can also be subject to WTO rules when restrictions on investment among countries restrain free flows of capital and goods.
"North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA)." Encyclopædia Britannica. Encyclopædia Britannica Online. Encyclopædia Britannica Inc., 2011. Web. 23 Nov. 2011. .
The resulting emergency meetings by the WTO raised concerns about whether the WTO can be an effective moderator in such disputes if nations decide to do things unilaterally. In other words, if larger, powerful nations can impose their will whenever they wish, what would be the fate of the poorer or less powerful nations? Even at the WTO Ministerial Meeting in Seattle, Caribbean nations would have likely lost out and gained little from the world trade liberalization agenda of the WTO had the huge public not been able to derail that
In this paper I will summarize the arguments for and against trade protection for United States industries. Among the measures that can be used to restrict foreign trade are tariffs and trade quotas. Industries can also get nontariff barriers, miscellaneous legislation which give domestic products an advantage. In general, experts agree that restricted foreign trade benefits workers and domestic businesses, while under free trade consumers have a greater quantity and quality of choices available to them. [1] I will also look at arguments for and against NAFTA, an important trade agreement between the countries of North America.
In December of 1992, Presidents Salinas (Mexico), Bush (U.S.) and Prime Minister Brian Mulroney of Canada signed the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA). The Mexican legislature ratified NAFTA in 1993 and the treaty went into effect on January 1, 1994, creating the largest free-trade zone in the world.
Following the Uruguay Round of multilateral trade negotiations, The World Trade Organization (WTO) was established in 1995 as the successor to the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT). The WTO is an international organization that watches over trade relationships between nations dealing with goods, services, intellectual property and investments. The main function of the WTO is “to ensure that trade flows as smoothly, predictably and freely as possible” (“The World Trade Organization”). The WTO helps international cooperation by providing countries with a fair forum for resolving disputes over trade issues. Member countries bring their trade disputes to the WTO rather than acting unilaterally. The organization also strives to lower the cost of living and boost economic growth by reducing protectionism and promoting freer trade. Member countries enjoy the security the trading rules provide, but they are required to commit to opening their markets and abiding by the commitments they agreed to.
Most trade agreements are created for the elimination of tariffs between the specified countries, but NAFTA is an exception. It covers market access, such as phasing out tariffs over a 15-year period and the rules of origin. The rule of origin states that goods and services must originate in one of the North American countries to receive access to the lower tariffs. NAFTA also covers trade rules, services, the removal of investment restrictions, and the protection of intellectual property like patents, copyrights, and trademarks. Lastly, a dispute settlement process was established, which is critical in solving problems between the countries before they cause serious problems.
The World Trade Organization (WTO) is an organization that intends to supervise and liberalize international trade. The organization deals with regulation of trade between participating countries; it provides a framework for negotiating and formalizing trade agreements, and a dispute resolution process aimed at enforcing participant's adherence to WTO agreement, which are signed by representatives of member governments and ratified by their parliaments.
Roughly fifteen year ago the United States entered into an agreement with its neighboring countries Canada and Mexico. With the incarnation of this intercontinental free trade agreement; the United States acting as the conduit would not only increase trade productivity for itself but, allot its sister nations to the north and south the same advantages. The North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) is beneficial to America because, it encourages the expansion of job opportunities, abolishes taxes and tariffs that can restrict the flow of imports and exports, and supplies the States with goods and services at lower costs causing profits to increase exponentially.
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 open markets for trade. But the WTO is not just about opening markets, and in some circumstances its rules support maintaining trade barriers — for example, to protect consumers or prevent the spread of disease.
Globalization has become one of the most influential forces in the twentieth century. International integration of world views, products, trade and ideas has caused a variety of states to blur the lines of their borders and be open to an international perspective. The merger of the Europeans Union, the ASEAN group in the Pacific and NAFTA in North America is reflective of the notion of globalized trade. The North American Free Trade Agreement was the largest free trade zone in the world at its conception and set an example for the future of liberalized trade. The North American Free Trade Agreement is coming into it's twentieth anniversary on January 1st, 2014. 1 NAFTA not only sought to enhance the trade of goods and services across the borders of Canada, US and Mexico but it fostered shared interest in investment, transportation, communication, border relations, as well as environmental and labour issues. The North American Free Trade Agreement was groundbreaking because it included Mexico in the arrangement.2 Mexico was a much poorer, culturally different and protective country in comparison to the likes of Canada and the United States. Many members of the U.S Congress were against the agreement because they did not want to enter into an agreement with a country that had an authoritarian regime, human rights violations and a flawed electoral system.3 Both Canadians and Americans alike, feared that Mexico's lower wages and lax human rights laws would generate massive job losses in their respected economies. Issues of sovereignty came into play throughout discussions of the North American Free Trade Agreement in Canada. Many found issue with the fact that bureaucrats and politicians from alien countries would be making deci...
Global trade occurs between many nations. While the intent of free trade is just that for trade to occur freely without government intervention in the open market. The truth is that governments do intervene in free trade imposing many sanctions, tariffs, quotas and other economic policies to limit free trade. To better regulate governments role in free trade a General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) was created in 1947 (Carbaugh, 2011, p. 191). GATT helped trade by having all nations, included in the original group, trade on mutually beneficial policies. GATT has since been replaced by the World Trade Organization (WTO) that still honors many policies of GATT that now includes 153 nations that is inclusive of 97% of all world trade.
After the failed International Trade Organization, Rodrik discusses the Bretton Woods Agreement, the transition from the General Agreement on Tariffs and T...
For example, states remain the key negotiators and entities in major global governance entities. Additionally, states retain compulsory power over their subjects or constituents, a form of control that new players in global governments have generally not obtained. Globalization has led to several substantial changes in global governance and the entities participating in governance activities. First, over the past 70 years, an increasing number of nations have signed onto international agreements. For example, when the Global Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) was created in 1947, it had no institutional structure; by 2009, though, more than 150 nations – accounting for 97% of world trade – were members of GATT’s successor, the World Trade Organization (Fidler, 2009).
To discuss how the World Trade Organization impacts international trading and national sovereignty we must first explain what it is and why it was established in the first place. The World Trade Organization is designed to create the rules involved with trade. These trading rules include all countries, not just the US, and can therefore be a little tricky at times. "The WTO establishes a framework for trade policies, it does not define or specify outcome...
International organizations create space for its members to coordinate interests and actions which helps promote interdependent relationships among them and strengthens their legitimacy. As society has progressed, it has globalized, and in the past 50 years states have had to address their growing dependence, especially in the economic sector. The World Trade Organization (WTO), is an institution which has an immense impact on the international political economy and the way states function within the international system. It organizes agreements and treaties which govern how its members decide policies, tariffs, and keeps states accountable for their actions. For example, the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT), determines how states can regulate their import and exports. (Hurd 2014,