The World Trade Organization (WTO) is considered Globalization’s bulwark in the globalization process. It espouses free trade and the international laws that govern them. It was the brainchild of President Roosevelt and Prime Minister Churchill in 1941 with the plan to “further the enjoyment of all states, great or small, victor or vanquished, of access, on equal terms to the trade and to the raw materials of the world which are needed for their economic prosperity.” As early as 1943, the US and Britain have begun to establish a formal trade regime in the form of General Agreements on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) as a bulwark against the Soviet bloc. The institution of the International Trade Organization (ITO) would have tied the trade rules of GATT to employment, competition and restrictive practices. The GATT and ITO collapsed as they came under fire from being seen as imposing an unbalanced set of rules and, of course, the exclusion of two of the world’s biggest countries: China and USSR.
From the collapse, the Uruguay Round negotiations were concluded in 1994 thus giving birth to the WTO still excluding the two countries in the beginning. Since then, their membership has grown, many trade disputes have been arbitrated and new agreements (i.e. Trade-related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights [TRIPS]) have been established. It’s role had also been expanded from favoring traders to considering the collective interests of the players involved. It was also envisioned to have teeth to be able to implement the rules it had given out.
The Essay on International Trade World Apec Open
Advantages of Technology in Internation Trade Technology plays a major role in international trade. Databases, overnight delivery and faxes have opened the world market to not only larger companies but small ones too. To add to this globalization, companies and even competitors are combining and forming alliances to cut cost and increase the profit margin. Chrysler, General Motors and Ford have ...
In essence, however, I believe that the WTO has been reduced to a negotiating table with no foreseeable tangible manifestations of its goals. I also believe that it had just become an unnecessary duplication of Regional Trade Agreements (RTA) which seem to have more teeth and more pledges honored by the member states.
The weakness of the WTO stems from the reluctance of major players to concede to the rules set by the institution. That is, if their interests are hindered, they would have no prerogative to follow such rules. Such are the cases in the online gambling issues between Antigua and Barbuda and the US, agricultural subsidies in the EU and US, and others. The second weakness stems from the lack of legitimacy that it gathers. It had lost some to Mexico in the Metalclad case and Costa Rica to the US investment case. In both cases, the ruling of the International Centre for Settlement of Investment Disputes (ICSID) favored to the investors who stepped over the bounds of national sovereignty in the countries’ decision to protect their natural environment. Thirdly, is that the WTO has already started to go down the slippery slope of deadlock and indecisions rendering them useless. Since the Uruguay Talks, there have been no more effective negotiations to increase the credibility, legitimacy and introduce corrections to the unfavorable practices within the WTO. The Doha round, which was targeted at improving WTO development agendas, was one of the most prolific of them all. Unfortunately, none of the ministerial conferences has ever come into closure even as the talks shifted to Cancun and then to Hong Kong.
References
Philippe Sands “Lawless World” (London: Penguin Group, 2005)
WTO website
BBC news articles
