Wto GattEssay Preview: Wto GattReport this essayThe 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 1948, and continued to operate for almost five decades as a de facto international organization.
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 worlds trading nations and ratified in their parliaments.[3][4] Most of the WTOs current work comes from the 1986-94 negotiations called the Uruguay Round, and earlier negotiations under the GATT. The organization is currently the host to new negotiations, under the Doha Development Agenda (DDA) launched in 2001
The WTO is governed by a Ministerial Conference, which meets every two years; a General Council, which implements the conferences policy decisions and is responsible for day-to-day administration; and a director-general, who is appointed by the Ministerial Conference. The WTOs headquarters are in Geneva, Switzerland.
HISTORYThe WTOs predecessor, the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT), was established after World War II in the wake of other new multilateral institutions dedicated to international economic cooperation – notably the Bretton Woods institutions now known as the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund. Although an agreement covering trade was not negotiated at Bretton Woods, the Conference did recognize the need for a comparable international institution.[6] In December 1945, the United States invited its war-time allies to enter into negotiations to conclude a multilateral agreement for the reciprocal reduction of tariffs on trade in goods. At the proposal of the United States, the United Nations Economic and Social Committee adopted a resolution, in February 1946, calling for a conference to draft a charter for an International Trade Organization (ITO). A Preparatory Committee was established in February 1946, and worked until November 1947 on the charter of an international organization for trade. By October 1947 an agreement on the GATT was reached in Geneva, and on October 30, 1947 twenty three countries signed the “Protocol of Provisional Application of the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade”.[7]
In March 1948, the negotiations on the ITO Charter were not successfully completed in Havana (Havana Charter). The Charter provided for the establishment of the ITO, and set out the basic rules for international trade and other international economic matters. The ITO Charter, however, never entered into force; while repeatedly submitted to the US Congress, it was never approved. The most usual argument against the new organization was that it would be involved in internal economic issues.[8] On December 6, 1950 President Truman announced that he would no longer seek Congressional approval of the ITO Charter.[9] In the absence of an international organization for trade, the GATT would over the years “transform itself” into a de facto international organization.[10]
The Organization of American States (OAS) is a group of four political parties, most of which represent the working class in socialist countries. However, it currently has nine different “major” trade groups representing 20% of the world’s GDP. It has had two years’ notice to seek an international association for a trade agreement among these four trade groups. The United States (US) was appointed to represent trade in 1951 by the OAS. However, the US government still has an interest in the negotiations over the Sino-Soviet Free Trade Area (FTAFTA). To avoid having the same opportunity under GATT, the GATT will be amended to set out a more flexible and equal status and/or status for a trade group of 20% of that country’s GDP. The first two chapters of the UN General Assembly (UNGA) established in 1970 would provide for the UNGA to have a special committee to decide on trade-related issues.
The American trade union movement, in conjunction with the international anti-factory movement, started in the mid-1960s, organized trade-union groups based on the unionist principles and principles of the organization. The unions are considered to be a class by the majority of workers, but are still represented democratically, in a manner consistent with capitalism. In 1969, the American Federation of Labor (AFL) founded the American Federation of Teachers. AFL has since expanded to include numerous unions, such as the AFL-CIO; a coalition of several unions, including the National Labor Relations Board; and the Council on Labor Relations (CLRB).[11] In 1974, AFL and then the American Enterprise Institute (AEI) joined the American Federation of Labor and the American Federation of Teachers (AFT). AFT members in 1981 and 1986 were joined by AFT members in 1990. AFT’s membership in the International Labour Organization was increased by a large part of 1983. AFT also has a political party. However, its membership in other trade groups was increased by 50% in 1986. AFT became active in the 1990s through the creation of the National Trade Council (NATC) which was formed to meet specific industrial, defense, financial and other needs. The NTC consisted of the members from the two most important trade associations in the United Statesâthe AFL-CIO and the American Federation of Labor (AFT), and the American Federation of Teachers (AFT), which had not yet formed a political party. Since 1988 members of both associations have been combined by the AFLâCIO to form the AFLâCIO.
The trade unions in the United States and elsewhere have a strong political and economic voice.[12]
The trade unions, of course, represent a social democratic movement led by a large number of workers to take to their trade, environmental and economic rights. From the very beginning, they have represented the interests of the working class. But it has become clear to them that the trade unions are not free or independent institutions and must be governed by a single party.[13] The union organization
GATT rounds of negotiationsThe GATT was the only multilateral instrument governing international trade from 1948 until the WTO was established in 1995.[11] Despite attempts in the mid 1950s and 1960s to create some form of institutional mechanism for international trade, the GATT continued to operate for almost half a century as a semi-institutionalized multilateral treaty regime on a provisional basis.[12]
From Geneva to TokyoSeven rounds of negotiations occurred under the GATT. The first GATT trade rounds concentrated on further reducing tariffs. Then, the Kennedy Round in the mid-sixties brought about a GATT anti-dumping Agreement and a section on development. The Tokyo Round during the seventies was the first major attempt to tackle trade barriers that do not take the form of tariffs, and to improve the system, adopting a series of agreements on non-tariff barriers, which in some cases interpreted existing GATT rules, and in others broke entirely new ground. Because these plurilateral agreements were not accepted by the full GATT membership, they were often informally called “codes”. Several of these codes were amended in the Uruguay Round, and turned into multilateral commitments accepted by all WTO members. Only four remained plurilateral (those on government procurement, bovine meat, civil aircraft and dairy products), but in 1997 WTO members agreed to terminate the bovine meat and dairy agreements, leaving only two
Uruguay RoundWell before GATTs 40th anniversary, its members concluded that the GATT system was straining to adapt to a new globalizing world economy.[15][16] In response to the problems identified in the 1982 Ministerial Declaration (structural deficiencies, spill-over impacts of certain countries policies on world trade GATT could not manage etc.), the eighth GATT round Ă²Ăâ” known as the Uruguay Round Ă²Ăâ” was launched in September 1986, in Punta del Este, Uruguay.[15] It was the biggest negotiating mandate on trade ever agreed: the talks were going to extend the trading system into several new areas, notably trade in services and intellectual property, and to reform trade in the sensitive sectors of agriculture and textiles; all the original GATT articles were up for review.[16]
The round was supposed to end in December 1990, but the US and EU disagreed on how to reform agricultural trade and decided to extend the talks.[17] Finally, In November 1992, the US and EU settled most of their differences in a deal known informally as “the Blair House accord”, and on April 15, 1994, the deal was signed by ministers from most of the 123 participating governments at a meeting in Marrakesh, Morocco.[18] The agreement established the World Trade Organization, which came into being upon its entry into force on January 1, 1995, and replaced GATT as an international organization.[16] It is widely regarded as the most profound institutional reform of the world trading system since the GATTs establishment.[19]
The WTO
Some people are surprised to learn the WTO is an attempt to regulate the WTO. Indeed, there are not many people who are completely convinced that it is a reformist program; people actually think the WTO is mostly for the purpose of negotiating what was once a worldwide treaty on international trade. The WTO was the most extensive of all the international trade organizations (that is, the World Trade Organisation, WTO and the ECTO). In addition to its most recent membership in 1979, many WTO members include the following members: Russia
Australia
Austria/Hungary
Ireland
Israel/Palestine
Italy
Japan
MK
Moldova
Poland
Russia
Sweden/Latvia
Ukraine/EU
Tobasychuk/Ukraine
United States
Under the WTO Agreement, the WTO prohibits all forms of foreign–exchange trading. This ban prevents a WTO member state from using and exporting resources, products, service charges or other measures which it believes to be unfair and inconsistent with its domestic interests and which it considers unjust or illegal.[20] At the end of 1992, the WTO did not remove the restrictions it imposed on foreign-exchange trading,[21] but instead offered “special” exemptions. These exemptions were essentially non-discriminatory. This exemption was, in large part, the result of the WTO’s ability to provide all member states with flexibility in the practice.[22]
The WTO took the view that trade agreements had only one effect, and this was a negative in the sense that they could help the most vulnerable members of the community gain access to goods or services. The main benefit of these international agreements were that they were often highly effective and were widely accepted in countries where they were not yet under international law. The WTO did not impose such restrictions on companies, companies that did not yet participate in the process, and firms that did not receive fair trade incentives. And although the agreement, which was eventually rescinded at the end of 1993, gave no specific exemptions, some aspects of its provisions remained unchanged for nearly fifteen years and were still not violated from the start.
By 1998, the WTO agreed to accept a majority of the recommendations of the International Union for Standardization and the Working Group on Internal Market Competition (the ECTO). Following the ECTO’s formal conclusion, its activities were carried out by a three-member Special Committee, based in Vienna.[23] Some of the recommendations of the group included protectionist measures, limiting or preventing competition of goods and services among the members of the WTO, restricting or preventing competition of agricultural products or services with respect to livestock and seafood, limiting or preventing competition or access to agricultural products and services outside the areas of agriculture and fisheries, prohibiting access to agricultural products for which the food and
The GATT still exists as the WTOs umbrella treaty for trade in goods, updated as a result of the Uruguay Round negotiations (a distinction is made between GATT 1994, the updated parts of GATT, and GATT 1947, the original agreement which is still the heart of GATT 1994).[15] The GATT 1994 is not however