Economics
World Trade Organisation
The World Trade Organization (WTO) is an international organization that regulates and facilitates trade between nations. It provides a forum for negotiating trade agreements, resolves trade disputes, and sets rules for international trade. The WTO aims to promote free and fair trade, reduce trade barriers, and support economic development.
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eBook - ePubThe Impact of WTO Membership
A Comparative Analysis of China, Russia, and Ukraine
- Anastasia Loginova, Irina Mikheeva(Authors)
- 2017(Publication Date)
- Taylor & Francis(Publisher)
The World Trade Organization constitutes an organizational and legal foundation for the international trade system. WTO members account for about 95 percent of the world trade turnover. The WTO determines the rules of international trade in goods, services, and intellectual property, as well as exercises control of their fulfillment. In addition, it is on the WTO basis that principles of common trade relations’ and development directions between the countries are elaborated during collective discussions. The WTO determines the most significant contractual obligations, which act as guidelines for the WTO member states’ governments in lawmaking and law enforcement in the area of trade.The WTO ensures a common institutional framework for conducting trade relations among its members in matters related to agreements and associated legal documents.Like any other organization, the WTO carries out its activities on the basis of certain principles, sets goals, and determines the range of tasks. According to the Marrakesh Agreement, which established the WTO on April 15, 1994, the purpose of the organization is improving the standard of living, ensuring full employment, steady growth of the population’s income, and effective demand for goods and services.12It should be noted that, contrary to the popular belief, the WTO’s objective is not to liberalize international trade, but to ensure fair competition in the global market. Fair competition is achieved by adopting common rules of civilized and economically sound behavior in the world market by the WTO members, based on mutual benefit.13The development of trade and its liberalization through the reduction of barriers, thus, are not an end in themselves. The WTO’s objectives are defined by 1) expansion of production; 2) trade in goods and services with the most efficient use of the world’s resources in accordance with sustainable development objectives; 3) the pursuit of environmental protection; and 4) advanced opportunities, in accordance with the needs and concerns at different levels of economic development.
No longer available |Learn more- International Trade Centre(Author)
- 2000(Publication Date)
- United Nations Publications(Publisher)
PART ONE The World Trade Organization: Its role and functions © International Trade Centre and Commonwealth Secretariat 2003 © International Trade Centre and Commonwealth Secretariat 2003 C HAPTER 1 WTO: Forum for negotiations, dispute settlement and trade policy reviews Summary WTO is the umbrella organization responsible for the surveillance of the implementation of: q GATT and its associate agreements, q GATS, q Agreement on TRIPS, and q WTO’s other legal instruments. WTO provides a forum for continuous negotiations among its member countries for the further liberalization of the trade in goods and services and for discussions on other trade-related issues that may be selected for the development of rules and disciplines. In addition, it carries out periodic reviews of the trade policies of individual member countries. It is also responsible for settling trade disputes among its member countries on the basis of the rules of its legal instruments. By 31 May 1999, WTO had 134 members. In addition, 30 countries were negotiating for membership. 3 WTO: Its objectives, functions and structure Objectives and mandate Marrakesh Agreement Establishing the World Trade Organization (WTO Agreement), Preamble The WTO is the umbrella organization responsible for overseeing the implementation of all the multilateral and plurilateral Agreements that have been negotiated in the Uruguay Round and those that will be negotiated in the future. Its basic objectives are similar to those of GATT, which has been subsumed into WTO. These objectives have been expanded to give WTO a mandate to deal with trade in services. Furthermore, they clarify that, in promoting economic development through the expansion of trade, adequate attention has to be given to protecting and preserving the environment.
eBook - ePubThe Politics of International Organizations
Views from insiders
- Patrick Weller, Xu Yi-chong, Patrick Weller, Xu Yi-chong(Authors)
- 2015(Publication Date)
- Routledge(Publisher)
1 The World Trade Organization as an institution Stuart Harbinson• Status of the WTO• Membership of the WTO• Structure of the WTO• Structure of the WTO Secretariat• Secretariat staff• Selection of the Director-General• Organizational issues raised by expanding WTO membership• Appellate Body and secretariat• History and culture: from GATT to WTO• The WTO from 1995 to 2013• Interaction between main groups of players• Decision making• What fears/expectations have been raised? Have these materialized?The Marrakesh Agreement Establishing the World Trade Organization (usually referred to as the WTO Agreement) sets out five functions of the World Trade Organization (WTO). These are:• Conclusion: an organization that needs rebalancing?1 to facilitate the implementation, administration and operation, and further the objectives of, the WTO Agreement itself, as well as the other agreements it covers (known as the “covered Agreements”);2 to provide a forum for negotiations among WTO members concerning their multilateral trade relations; 3 to administer the Dispute Settlement Understanding; 4 to administer the Trade Policy Review Mechanism; and5 with a view to achieving greater coherence in global economic policy-making, to cooperate as appropriate with the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and World Bank.1The WTO came into existence on 1 January 1995. In the years since, it has also expanded into the field of trade-related technical assistance. This has been principally directed, through the means of a trust fund, at building developing countries’ capacity to handle multilateral trade relations.Based on the above, former WTO Director-General Pascal Lamy referred to the WTO as having four basic functions: trade negotiations; implementation and monitoring; dispute settlement; and building trade capacity.The Preamble of the WTO Agreement
eBook - PDFThe Law and Policy of the World Trade Organization
Text, Cases and Materials
- Peter Van den Bossche, Werner Zdouc(Authors)
- 2017(Publication Date)
- Cambridge University Press(Publisher)
It focuses on supporting the ‘internationalisation’ of small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs). 144 The WTO also works in close cooperation with the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) in publishing joint reports and maintain- ing a joint database on trade. 145 Recently, post conclusion of the Trade Facilitation Agreement, several interna- tional organisations, including the OECD, UNCTAD, the ITC, the World Bank and the World Customs Organization (WCO), have pledged to assist WTO Members in implementing their commitments under the aforesaid Agreement. 146 The WTO Director-General participates in the meetings of the United Nations Chief Executives Board (CEB), a body consisting of the heads of UN organisa- tions. 147 The objective of the CEB is to enhance international cooperation on global issues, such as, currently, the international response to the global eco- nomic crisis. The WTO is also represented on the United Nations High-Level Task Force (HLTF) on the Global Food Security Crisis, which was established by the CEB in April 2008, following the rise in global food prices and the subsequent crisis triggered by it. 148 In addition, the WTO Secretariat has concluded a large number of so-called Memoranda of Understanding (MOUs) with other international secretariats. These MOUs provide mainly for technical assistance from the WTO to these other sec- retariats or the geographical regions in which they work. In September 2003, for example, the then WTO Director-General, Supachai Panitchpakdi, and the Secretary- General of the ACP Group, Jean-Robert Goulongana, signed an MOU committing both organisations to cooperate more closely to provide training, technical assis- tance and support to negotiators of the ACP Member States in the Doha Round. 149 143 The WTO collaborates with ITC and UNCTAD inter alia in the annual publication of the World Tariff Profiles.
eBook - PDF- Sieglinde Gstöhl, Dirk De Bièvre(Authors)
- 2017(Publication Date)
- Bloomsbury Academic(Publisher)
109 Chapter 5 The European Union in the World Trade Organization The European Union (EU) is one of the most prominent members of the World Trade Organization (WTO). The common commercial policy has to comply with the rules of this multilateral trade organization – rules that the EU subscribes to and most of which it has actively helped craft-ing. This chapter provides an overview of the EU’s role in the WTO. It first presents the main components of the world trade regime and the WTO in particular. The WTO is simultaneously a forum for intergovern-mental trade negotiations, a set of commitments to trade liberalization that its members have entered into and an organization ensuring the enforcement of those commitments through its dispute settlement mech-anism. The chapter looks at how the EU has co-shaped the multilateral trade regime and discusses the EU’s role both as defendant and com-plainant in the WTO dispute settlement mechanism. The global trade regime In order to prevent a recurrence of the protectionism that prevailed dur-ing the economic depression in the interwar period, the United States and the United Kingdom pushed for the creation of rules for an open trading system. They were also the main driving forces for the establishment of the United Nations and of the Bretton Woods institutions after World War II. As a first provisional agreement on the way to an International Trade Organization (ITO), the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) was concluded in 1947 (‘GATT 1947’). It became the principal set of rules governing international trade for almost five decades (Barton et al., 2006 , pp. 27–48). The 23 countries that signed the GATT were ‘contracting parties’ and not members, because the GATT was not a formal treaty. The so-called Havana Charter, the Final Act of the UN Conference on Trade and Employment, was in 1948 signed by 54 states.
eBook - PDF- Peter Van den Bossche, Denise Prévost(Authors)
- 2021(Publication Date)
- Cambridge University Press(Publisher)
2 The World Trade Organization 2.1 Introduction The World Trade Organization (WTO) was established under the WTO Agreement and became operational on 1 January 1995. The WTO Agreement was signed on 15 April 1994 in Marrakesh, Morocco, by the countries and customs territories that had participated in the Uruguay Round of multilateral trade negotiations (hereinafter the Uruguay Round) from 1986 to 1993. The establishment of the WTO is seen by many as the most important result of the Uruguay Round and has been referred to as ‘the most dramatic advance in multilateralism since the inspired period of institution building of the late 1940s’. Today, however, the WTO is an organisation in crisis. In recent years, the WTO has been strongly criticised by the US in particular. In response to this criticism, but also in clear recognition that ‘not all is well’ at the WTO and that it needs to be modernised and strengthened, WTO Members As discussed in Chapter 1, while the current crisis of the multilateral trading system and of the WTO, its principal institution, cannot be fully attributed to any one cause or any one country, the radical change in United States (US) trade policy from 2017 onwards has been the primary cause of the crisis. As reported in The New York Times in December 2019: ‘The president and his top advisers have long viewed the WTO as an impediment to Mr. Trump’s prom- ise to put “America First.” They say the organization, which insists that all of its members receive equal treatment, has prevented the United States from protecting its workers and exerting its influence as the world’s most powerful economy. They have also criticized the WTO for emboldening China – whose economy boomed after it became a member in 2001 – while doing little to curb Beijing’s unfair trade practices.’ Reportedly, President Trump told senior White House officials in June 2018: ‘I don’t know why we’re in it.
eBook - ePubGlobal Governance and Japan
The Institutional Architecture
- Glenn D. Hook, Hugo Dobson(Authors)
- 2007(Publication Date)
- Routledge(Publisher)
What the literature presents, then, is a paradox. At a time when interest in global governance is on the rise, and when anxiety about the kind of global governance currently in place finds expression not only in mass public demonstrations during the meetings of world and regional organizations but also in the less visible debt relief, human rights and environmental campaigns, among others, the role of one of the institutions deemed to be at the core of contemporary global governance is insufficiently understood. The consequence of this paradox is significant, not least because it fails to accurately describe and understand the way in which global life generally, and international trade more specifically, is governed. This chapter attempts to overcome some of the problems inherent in the literature and advance a more detailed, contextualized and critical account of the WTO’s role in global governance. In contrast to much of the popular, practitioner and academic literature, it argues that the WTO is more than just an instance of interstate cooperation that coordinates commercial policy among its member states, a blunt instrument designed to promote corporate interests, or the potential platform for a world economic organization. The chapter takes as a starting point an understanding of global governance that sees the system of regulation administered by the WTO as one among a burgeoning number of transnational, regional and global actors, processes and mechanisms that contribute to what James Rosenau calls the ‘overarching pattern of governance’ within and across the globe (Rosenau 1995: 18). Rather than treating these actors, processes and mechanisms as neutral or passive entities or crude agents of transnational capital as the literature variously does, the core assumption here is that they are in varying degrees both the product of and forces involved in shaping global configurations of power. In this way, they contribute to the production and shaping of particular modes of behaviour consistent with the overarching logic of that power configuration.The argument presented here is that the WTO’s role in global governance can be critically and more fully uncovered through an examination of (1) the unique historical circumstances in which the institution of international trade regulation was created and the specific purposes it was intended to serve; and (2) the manner in which that institution has evolved through time. The chapter argues that the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT), as the precursor to the WTO and one-third of a post-war economic triumvirate (see Wilkinson 2002), was fashioned for the specific purpose of facilitating the exploitation of the economic opportunities presented to the US and, to a lesser extent, its Western allies in the post-Second World War era. To enable these opportunities to be fully realized, the GATT’s architects put in place a system of international trade regulation that facilitated an increase in the volume and value of trade in manufactured, semimanufactured and industrial goods but which, both from the outset and through time, excluded goods of political and economic significance (largely agriculture and textiles and clothing) from the institution’s remit. The chapter argues that the regulation of trade in this fashion contributed to the consolidation of US hegemony in the post-war era and to the structural disadvantagement of its potential competitors, particularly those in the global South. The chapter further argues that, despite high profile contestations among member states over the proposed extension of the liberalization agenda most notably resulting in the collapse of the Seattle and Cancún ministerial meetings (1999 and 2003 respectively) and the breakdown of the Doha round (the so-called Doha Development Agenda – DDA) in July 2006, this asymmetry of opportunity was and continues to be extended under the auspices of the WTO. This, in turn, has contributed (and continues to contribute) to the preservation of the post-war and post-cold war global configuration of power. In this way, the WTO’s role in global governance is better conceived of as one means by which a US-centred neoliberal world order has emerged and been perpetuated.
eBook - PDFThe Law and Policy of the World Trade Organization
Text, Cases, and Materials
- Peter Van den Bossche, Werner Zdouc(Authors)
- 2021(Publication Date)
- Cambridge University Press(Publisher)
Pursuant to Article V:1 of the WTO Agreement, the WTO is also to cooperate with other international organisations. Article V, which is entitled ‘Relations with Other Organizations’, states in its first paragraph: The General Council shall make appropriate arrangements for effective cooperation with other intergovernmental organizations that have responsibilities related to those of the WTO. The WTO has made cooperation arrangements with, inter alia, the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO), the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD), the World Customs Organization (WCO), the Food and Agricultural Organization (FAO), the World Health Organization (WHO), the Codex Alimentarius Commission (FAO/WHO), and the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES). 164 In all, 140 international organisations have observer status in the WTO or specific WTO bodies and the WTO Secretariat has working relations with some 200 international organisa- tions. 165 The WTO and UNCTAD also cooperate in a joint venture, the International Trade Centre (ITC), which works with developing countries and economies in transition to set up effective trade promotion programmes to expand export opportunities in particular for small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs). 166 With the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), the WTO works closely together on joint reports, on the trade in value-added (TiVA) database, 167 on the WTO iLibrary, and on an interactive web tool of trade facil- itation indicators (TFIs). 168 The WTO also works closely with the UN Secretariat on trade-related SDG targets and is part of the UN High-Level Task Force, which 114 2 The World Trade Organization 169 See WTO Annual Report 2019, p. 153. 170 See www.wto.org/english/news_e/news20_e/igo_26mar20_e.htm; and www.wto.org/english/news_e/ news20_e/igo_06apr20_e.htm.
- Henrik Horn, Petros C. Mavroidis(Authors)
- 2013(Publication Date)
- Cambridge University Press(Publisher)
183–209. Schropp, Simon. 2009. Trade Policy Flexibility and Enforcement in the WTO: A Law & Eco- nomics Analysis, Cambridge University Press. Why the WTO? 67 Schwartz, Warren F., and Alan O. Sykes. 2002. The Economics Structure of Renegotia- tion and Dispute Resolution in the WTO/GATT System, Journal of Legal Studies 31(1), pp. 179–204. Staiger, Robert W. 1995. International Rules and Institutions for Trade Policy, in Grossman, Gene M., and Kenneth Rogoff (eds.), Handbook of International Economics III, Amster- dam: North-Holland, pp. 1495–1551. Sykes, Alan O. 2005. The Economics of WTO Rules on Subsidies and Countervailing Mea- sures, in A. Appleton, P. Macrory & M. Plummer eds., The World Trade Organization: Legal, Economic and Political Analysis, Vol. II, New York: Springer Verlag. WTO. 2008. World Trade Report 2008: Trade in a Globalizing World, World Trade Organiza- tion, Geneva.
eBook - ePub- Steve Charnovitz(Author)
- 2014(Publication Date)
- WSPC(Publisher)
at http://www.wto.org/english/thewtoe/ministe/min0l_e/wto_matters-e.pdf.94 United Nations, Earth Summit Agenda 21, para. 2.22(k), available at http://www.un.org/esa/sustdev/agenda2lchapter2.htm.95 Young (1926) (noting that national states, each acting for itself, are inefficient guardians of joint interests).96 Peel (2001) (footnote omitted).97 See supra text accompanying notes 43 and 51.98 See Anderson, supra note 76, at 379–381 (discussing the symbiosis between international NGOs and international organizations and how these organizations engage in mutual legitimation).99 D-G Mike Moore, Address to Liberal International on the Backlash Against Globalization (26 October 2000) (transcript available at the WTO website at http://www.wto.org/english/news-e/spmme/spmm39_e.htm).100 Dunkel et al., Joint Statement on the Multilateral Trading System (1 February 2001) (transcript available at the WTO website at http://www.wto.org/english/newse/news0l-e/jointstatdavos-janOl-e.htm).101 See, e.g., Barfield (2001).102 Guidelines for Arrangements on Relations with Non-governmental Organizations, WTO Doc. WT/L/162 23 July 1996) (emphasis added), at http://www.wto.og/english/foruns-e/ngo-e/guide-e.htm.103 World Trade Organization, 10 Benefits of the WTO Trading System, at http://www.wto.org/english/thewtoe/whatise/lObene/lObO9_e.htm (“The system shields governments from narrow interests”.).104 See id.105 McGinnis and Movsesian (2000).106 Id. at 536.107 Id. at 527, 542.108 Id. at 571–572. In another passage, the authors say that their jurisprudence only is designed to raise hurdles for protectionist groups, not “value-driven groups”. Id. at 529. Unfortunately, the authors do not explain how to distinguish one from the other in an objective manner.109
eBook - ePubThe Global Division of Labour
Development and Inequality in World Society
- Richard Münch(Author)
- 2016(Publication Date)
- Palgrave Macmillan(Publisher)
in statu nascendi in the world trade order. This holds especially in view of the established movement away from an international and towards a transnational world trade order. In this regard we have to contradict the opinion of Rieger and Leibfried (2001: 133–166) who claim that the world trade order must be regarded exclusively as an international order. The position held by Rieger and Leibfried involves a systematic overestimation of the scope of action available to national governments. This goes both as regards the binding strength of WTO principles and WTO dispute settlement, and in view of the constraint to pursue economic structural change resulting from the growing inclusion in global trade.Inclusion of developing countries in the world trade orderThe negative consequences of the selective sectoral regulation of trade between the industrialized and the developing countries for both sides and for the functional integration of the global economy can be effectively assessed using the example of the textile market (Keesing and Wolf 1980; Langer 1995: 302–311; Kim et al. 2002; Heron 2012). In this market it is above all the Asian developing countries that have put the US and European manufacturers under competitive pressure since the 1950s due to their considerably lower wage costs. Due to the labour-intensive character of these products, wage costs form a substantial part of the total costs. To date, the textile trade holds a large share of the entire world trade (10 per cent), and an even higher share of developing countries’ exports (25 per cent). Bangladesh and Sri Lanka receive 50 per cent of their income from the export of textiles. As regards Sub-Saharan Africa, the textile trade covers 24 per cent of all exports; in Asia it is 14 per cent; and it is 8 per cent for Latin America and the Caribbean (UNDP 1997; Woods 1999). In 1961 and 1962, the first agreements were concluded between the industrialized and the developing countries. In 1974 a comprehensive master contract for self-restriction agreements was concluded: the Arrangement Regarding International Trade in Textiles, which is known as World Textile Agreement or the Multi-Fibre Arrangement (MFA). This arrangement contradicts the spirit of the GATT because it is not cross-sectoral and it foresees import quotas instead of equal import limitations by tariffs for all suppliers. Nevertheless, it was incorporated into the GATT as a special legal order. The establishing of import quotas for certain countries and certain products first of all resulted in goods flows going increasingly to quota-free countries and quota-free products. The industrialized countries responded with a permanent extension of their list of agreed quotas so that they achieved perfect protection of their domestic textile industries. Interestingly, the developing countries accepted the quota regulations without much resistance. This may be due to the fact that a certain trade volume was guaranteed to them in the different markets, thus protecting them from eventual competition from new suppliers. Being privileged holders of quotas and thus avoiding competition from other rising developing countries, they could even adjust their prices to the price level of the expensive domestic manufacturers in the industrialized countries. Price competition between developing countries was therefore replaced by marked “rent-seeking” by way of safeguarding privileges in the form of agreed import quotas.
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