World Trade Organization
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.
- For other uses of the initials WTO, see WTO (disambiguation).
The World Trade Organization (WTO) is an international organization which oversees a large number of agreements defining the "rules of trade" between its member states (WTO, 2004a). The WTO is the successor to the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade, and operates with the broad goal of reducing or abolishing international trade barriers.
WTO headquarters are located in Geneva, Switzerland. On May 13, 2005, Pascal Lamy was elected the Director-General. He took over from Supachai Panitchpakdi on September 1, 2005. As of August 19, 2005, there are 148 members in the organization (WTO, 2004a). All WTO members are required to grant one another most favoured nation status, such that (with some exceptions) trade concessions granted by a WTO member to another country must be granted to all WTO members (WTO, 2004c).
In the late 1990s, the WTO became a major target of protests by the anti-globalization movement. See critique.
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Origins
The WTO was created on January 1, 1995 to replace the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT), a series of post-war trade treaties intended to facilitate free trade. The GATT principles and agreements were adopted by the WTO, which was charged with administering and extending them. Unlike the GATT, the WTO has a substantial institutional structure.
The WTO is effectively the long-delayed successor to the anticipated International Trade Organization, which was originally intended to follow the GATT. The International Trade Organization charter was agreed at the UN Conference on Trade and Employment in Havana in March 1948, but was blocked by the U.S. Senate (WTO, 2004b). Some historians have argued that that failure may have resulted from fears within the American business community that the ITO could be used to regulate, rather than liberate, big business (Lisa Wilkins, 1997).
Functions
The WTO has two basic functions: as a negotiating forum for discussions of new and existing trade rules, and as a trade dispute settlement body.
Negotiations
Where most international organisations operate on a one country, one vote or even a weighted voting basis, many WTO decisions, such as adopting agreements (and revisions to them) are determined by consensus. This does not necessarily mean that unanimity is found: only that no Member finds a decision so unacceptable that they must insist on their objection. Voting is only employed as a fall-back mechanism or in special cases.
The advantage of consensus is that it encourages efforts to find the most widely acceptable decision. Main disadvantages include large time requirements and many rounds of negotiation to develop a consensus decision, and the tendency for final agreements to use ambiguous language on contentious points that makes future interpretation of treaties difficult. Richard Steinberg (2002) argues that although the WTO's consensus governance model provides law-based initial bargaining, trading rounds close through power-based bargaining favouring Europe and the United States, and may not lead to Pareto improvement. The most notable recent failures of consensus, at the Ministerial meetings at Seattle (1999) and Cancún (2003), were due to the refusal of some developing countries to accept proposed.
The WTO began the current round of negotiations, the Doha round, at the Fourth Ministerial Conference in Doha, Qatar in November 2001 (WTO, 2004d). The talks have been highly contentious and agreement has not been reached, despite continuing talks in Cancún, Geneva, and Paris.
Dispute resolution
Like most other international organizations, the WTO has no significant power to enforce the decisions it makes when a member brings a complaint against another. If decisions of its Dispute Settlement Body are not complied with, it may authorise "retaliatory measures" on the part of the complaining member, but no other enforcement action is available. This means that economically powerful states like the United States can essentially ignore rulings against them from complaints brought by the economically weak, as the latter states simply do not have the power to hurt US trade enough to force the US to change its position. This has been the case, for example, with the March 2005 Appellate Body ruling in case DS 267 declaring US cotton subsidies illegal.
Membership
The WTO had 76 members at its creation. A further 72 members joined over the following ten years, the latest (as of 16 February 2005) being Cambodia on 13 October 2004. A current list of members can be found here.
A number of non-members have been observers at the WTO: Algeria, Andorra, Azerbaijan, Bahamas, Belarus, Bhutan, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Cape Verde, Equatorial Guinea, Ethiopia, Holy See (Vatican), Iran, Iraq, Kazakhstan, Lao People's Democratic Republic, Lebanese Republic, Libya, Russian Federation, Samoa, Sao Tome and Principe, Saudi Arabia, Serbia and Montenegro (each republic is applying for separate membership), Seychelles, Sudan, Tajikistan, Tonga, Ukraine, Uzbekistan, Vanuatu, Vietnam and Yemen. Many of these countries are seeking membership.
Iran first applied to join the WTO in 1996, but the United States, accusing Tehran of supporting international terrorism, blocked its application 22 times. The U.S. said in March it would drop its veto on a start to Iran's accession negotiations. The U.S. has chosen not to block Iran's latest application for membership as part of a nuclear related deal. Russia, having first applied to join GATT in 1993, is not yet a member either.
Chronology
- 1986-1994 - Uruguay Round of GATT negotiations culminating in the Marrakech Agreement that established the WTO.
- January 1, 1995 - The WTO came into existence.
- May 1, 1995 - Renato Ruggiero became director-general for a 4-year term.
- December 9 - December 13, 1996 - The inaugural ministerial conference in Singapore. Disagreements between largely developed and developing economies emerged during this conference over four issues initiated by this conference, which led to them being collectively referred to as the "Singapore issues".
- May 18 - May 20, 1998 - 2nd ministerial conference in Geneva, Switzerland.
- September 1, 1999 - Mike Moore became director-general. The post had been fiercely contested; eventually a compromise was reached with Mike Moore and Supachai Panitchpakdi taking half each of a six-year term.
- November 30 - December 3, 1999 - 3rd ministerial conference in Seattle, Washington, USA. The conference itself ended in failure, with massive demonstrations and riots drawing worldwide attention.
- November 9 - November 13, 2001 - 4th ministerial conference in Doha, Qatar begins the Doha round. Issuance of the Doha Declaration.
- December 11, 2001 - The People's Republic of China joined the WTO after 15 years of negotiations (the longest in GATT history).
- January 1, 2002 - The Republic of China (Taiwan) joined under the name "Separate Customs Territory of Taiwan, Penghu, Kinmen and Matsu."
- September 1, 2002 - Supachai Panitchpakdi became director-general.
- September 10 - September 14, 2003 - 5th ministerial conference in Cancún, Mexico aims at forging agreement on the Doha round. An alliance of 22 southern states, the G20 (led by India, China and Brazil), resisted demands from the North for agreements on the so-called "Singapore issues" and called for an end to agricultural subsidies within the EU and the US. The talks broke down without progress.
- August 2004 - Geneva talks achieve a framework agreement on the Doha round. Developed countries will lower agricultural subsidies, and in exchange the developing countries will lower tariff barriers to manufactured goods.
- October 2004 - Cambodia becomes last nation so far to join the WTO
- May 2005 - Paris talks aimed at finalising issues for agreement before the December 2005 ministerial conference in Hong Kong are hung over technical issues. The group of five (U.S., Australia, the EU, Brazil and India) fail to agree over chicken, beef and rice. France continues to protest restrictions on subsidies to farmers. Oxfam accuses the EU of delaying tactics which threaten to scupper the Doha round.
- December 13 - December 18, 2005 - 6th ministerial conference will be held in Hong Kong.
Critique
The WTO promotes economic globalization and free trade, which some consider problematic. WTO treaties have been accused of a partial and unfair bias toward multinational corporations and wealthy nations. While membership is voluntary, critics say that not joining practically places the non-participating nation under embargo, creating an international system of forced economic rules discouraging change and experimentation.
The decision making process in and related to the organization has also come under fire. The "big three" members - the United States, the European Union, and Japan - have been accused of using the WTO to exert undue influence over less powerful member states. In addition, some believe that member states have adopted WTO treaties undemocratically or to the detriment of their citizens or ecologies.
Jagdish Bhagwati criticised the introduction of TRIPs (forum shifting) into the WTO/GATT framework. His fear is that other off-topic agendas such as worker's rights might slip in.
See also
- Director-General of the World Trade Organization
- Free trade
- GATS Agreement
- International trade
- TRIPS Agreement
- Trade bloc
- Anti-Globalization
External links
- Official WTO homepage
- Agreements administered by the WTO
- WTO 10th Anniversary — Highlights of the first decade, Annual Report 2005 pages 116-166
- Official homepage of the 6th Ministerial Conference of the WTO, Hong Kong
- WTO and asbestos
- International Centre for Trade and Sustainable Development
- 9/3/2003 Guardian article on WTO — by George Monbiot
- BBC News — Profile: WTO
- BBC News — Timeline: WTO — A chronology of key events
- www.3dthree.org — Jargon Explained, Glossaries of Trade terms compiled by 3D (Trade, Human Rights, Equitable Economy)
- The Nations’ Struggle for the Wealth of the World and its Latest Battlefields
- Slate — Enemies of the WTO: Bogus arguments against the World Trade Organization by Paul Krugman
Anti-WTO links
- Parody of official WTO page
- WTOaction.org
- TradeObservatory.org
- www.globalexchange.org — Top Reasons to Oppose the WTO
- www.sfgate.com — Is the World Trade Organization a blessing or a curse? by Kevin Phillips
- www.foodfirst.org — International Day of Protest Against the WTO
- Just Say No to the WTO — graphic art by Seattle's James Koehnline
References and further reading
- Martin Khor et al (2005), WTO and the Global Trading System: Development Impacts and Reform Proposals, Zed Books
- Fatoumata Jawara and Aileen Kwa (2004), Behind the Scenes at the WTO: The Real World of International Trade Negotiations/Lessons of Cancun, Zed Books
- Braithwaite, John & Peter Drahos (2000), Global Business Regulation, Cambridge University Press.
- Dunkley, Graham (2000)The Free Trade Adventure, Zed Books.
- Steinberg, Richard H. (2002). In the shadow of law or power? Consensus-based bargaining and outcomes in the GATT/WTO. International Organization 56 (2), 339–374.
- World Trade Organization. (2004b). Understanding the WTO - The GATT years: From Havana to Marrakesh. Retrieved Dec. 11, 2004
- World Trade Organization. (2004c). Understanding the WTO - Principles of the trading system. Retrieved Dec. 11, 2004.
- World Trade Organization. (2004d). Understanding the WTO - The Doha agenda. Retrieved Dec 11, 2004.
- World Trade Organization. (2004e). Understanding the WTO - members. Retrieved Dec 12, 2004.
- Wilkins, Mira (1997, Nov. 20) Review of Susan Ariel Aaronson, "Trade and the American Dream: A Social History of Postwar Trade Policy" Economic History Services.
More references at the WorldTradeLawnet Bibliography.
