A Report on World Trade Organization (WTO )

1.1. Introduction

The World Trade Organization (WTO) came into being on 1 January 1995 with a membership of 128 countries. Nearly 50 years after the failure of the International Trade Organization, the dream of those who had worked for an international trade organization had been realized.The WTO does not discriminate between its members on anything except the political ability to implement free trade. Its legitimacy rests upon the mutual consensus of governments all over the world to legislate for deregulation of the private sector. From this perspective however, the WTO becomes a major force for uniformity and standardization of international interests. The WTO facilitates the flow of goods and services among countries and regions world wide. World Trade Organization helps member states in various ways and this enables them to reap benefits1.2. Origin of the report

This report originates to fulfill the requirement of studying International Business, which is the

course of BBA Program of Northern University Bangladesh. The topic of the report is “World

Trade Organization.”

1.3. Scope of the report

The Organization is very organized and resourceful. Its annual reports, publication, documents

and websites are very much rich for data collection.

1.4. Broad Objective

Broad objective is the main issue of a report. All the information of a report of will be on the basis of broad objective. Every report should have broad objective. Our broad objective of the report is to being efficient to prepare report on WTO.1.5. Specific Objective

Specific objective is to reach the broad objective. A specific objective is the classification of a broad objective. Our specific objective of the report is to know how the WTO does their work.1.6. Purpose

The purpose of the report is to develop our skills in international marketing activities, to

elaborate our thinking about WTO’s works.

1.7. Sources of Information

The report has been developed both on primary & secondary data. Primary Source: Our own assumptions to prepare a report on WTO.Secondary Source: Internet.

1.8. Methodology

The report has been prepared based on secondary data such as the organization’s annual

report, documents and collected necessary information from down loaded data from their

website through internet. Then above all these documents are also been calculated, analyzed

and organized to evaluate the financial performance of WTO. All data have been used in word

program to management report, finally the report prepared to show the WTO at present

situation.

1.9. Limitations

To prepare this report we have faced a lot of problems such as unavailability of lab, electricity

problem, unavailability of related books, lack of time, unavailability of information in net etc.

1.10. Data CollectionThese data is gathered from different articles and from internet.

2.1. The World Trade Organization (WTO) in brief

The WTOLocation: Geneva, SwitzerlandEstablished: 1 January 1995Created by: Uruguay Round negotiations (1986–94)Membership: 150 countries (since 11 January 2007)Budget: 175 million Swiss francs for 2006Secretariat staff: 635Head: Pascal Lamy (director-general)

Functions:• Administering WTO trade agreements• Forum for trade negotiations• Handling trade disputes• Monitoring national trade policies• Technical assistance and training for developing countries• Cooperation with other international organizations

What is the World Trade Organization?The World Trade Organization (WTO) is the only global international organization dealing with the rules of trade between nations. At its heart are the WTO agreements, negotiated and signed by the bulk of the world’s trading nations and ratified in their parliaments. The goal is to help producers of goods and services, exporters, and importers conduct their business. The World Trade Organization came into being in 1995. One of the youngest of the international organizations, the WTO is the successor to the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) established in the wake of the Second World War.

The World Trade Organization (WTO) is an international organization designed to supervise and liberalize international trade. 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 majority of the world's trading nations and ratified in their parliaments. Most of the issues that the WTO focuses on derive from previous trade negotiations, especially from the Uruguay Round. The organization is currently working with its members on a new trade negotiation called the Doha Development Agenda (Doha round), launched in 2001. The WTO has 153 members, which represents more then 95% of total world trade. The WTO is governed by a Ministerial Conference, which meets every two years; a General Council, which implements the conference's policy decisions and is responsible for day-to-day administration; and a director-general, who is appointed by the Ministerial Conference. The WTO's headquarters is in Geneva, Switzerland..

Simply put the World Trade Organization (WTO) deals with the rules of trade between nations at a global or near-global level. But there is more to it than that.

Is it a bird, is it a plane?There are a number of ways of looking at the WTO. It’s an organization for liberalizing trade. It’s a forum for governments to negotiate trade agreements. It’s a place for them to settle trade disputes. It operates a system of trade rules. (But it’s not Superman, just in case anyone thought it could solve — or cause — all the world’s problems!)

Above all, it’s a negotiating forum … Essentially; the WTO is a place where member governments go, to try to sort out the trade problems they face with each other. The first step is to talk. 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 liberalize trade. But the WTO is not just about liberalizing trade, and in some circumstances its rules support maintaining trade barriers — for example to protect consumers or prevent the spread of disease.

It’s a set of rules … At its heart are the WTO agreements, negotiated and signed by the bulk of the world’s trading nations. These documents provide the legal ground-rules for international

commerce. They are essentially contracts, binding governments to keep their trade policies within agreed limits. Although negotiated and signed by governments, the goal is to help producers of goods and services, exporters, and importers conduct their business, while allowing governments to meet social and environmental objectives. The system’s overriding purpose is to help trade flow as freely as possible — so long as there are no undesirable side-effects — because this is important for economic development and well-being. That partly means removing obstacles. It also means ensuring that individuals, companies and governments know what the trade rules are around the world, and giving them the confidence that there will be no sudden changes of policy. In other words, the rules have to be “transparent” and predictable.

And it helps to settle disputes … This is a third important side to the WTO’s work. Trade relations often involve conflicting interests. Agreements, including those painstakingly negotiated in the WTO system, often need interpreting. The most harmonious way to settle these differences is through some neutral procedure based on an agreed legal foundation. That is the purpose behind the dispute settlement process written into the WTO agreements.

The result is assurance. Consumers and producers know that they can enjoy secure supplies and greater choice of the finished products, components, raw materials and services that they use. Producers and exporters know that foreign markets will remain open to them. The result is also a more prosperous, peaceful and accountable economic world. Virtually all decisions in the WTO are taken by consensus among all member countries and they are ratified by members' parliaments. Trade friction is channeled into the WTO's dispute settlement process where the focus is on interpreting agreements and commitments, and how to ensure that countries' trade policies conform to them. That way, the risk of disputes spilling over into political or military conflict is reduced. By lowering trade barriers, the WTO’s system also breaks down other barriers between peoples and nations.

At the heart of the system — known as the multilateral trading system — are the WTO’s agreements, negotiated and signed by a large majority of the world’s trading nations, and ratified in their parliaments. These agreements are the legal ground-rules for international commerce. Essentially, they are contracts, guaranteeing member countries important trade rights. They also bind governments to keep their trade policies within agreed limits to everybody’s benefit. The agreements were negotiated and signed by governments. But their purpose is to help producers of goods and services, exporters, and importers conduct their business.The goal is to improve the welfare of the peoples of the member countries

Born in 1995, but not so youngThe WTO began life on 1 January 1995, but its trading system is half a century older. Since 1948, the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) had provided the rules for the system. (The second WTO ministerial meeting, held in Geneva in May 1998, included a celebration of the 50th anniversary of the system.) It did not take long for the General Agreement to give birth to an unofficial, de facto international organization, also known informally as GATT. Over the years GATT evolved through several rounds of negotiations. The last and largest GATT round, was the Uruguay Round which lasted from 1986 to 1994 and led to the WTO’s creation. Whereas GATT

had mainly dealt with trade in goods, the WTO and its agreements now cover trade in services, and in traded inventions, creations and designs (intellectual property).

Location of the WTO headquarters in Geneva2.2. Mission, functions and principlesThe WTO's stated goal is to improve the welfare of the people of its member countries, specifically by lowering trade barriers and providing a platform for negotiation of trade. Its main mission is "to ensure that trade flows as smoothly, predictably and freely as possible". This main mission is further specified in certain core functions serving and safeguarding five fundamental principles, which are the foundation of the multilateral trading system. The WTO/GATT system is founded on non-discrimination, with its twin faces of Most-Favoured-Nation and National Treatment principles.

FunctionsAmong the various functions of the WTO, these are regarded by analysts as the most important:

It oversees the implementation, administration and operation of the covered agreements.

It provides a forum for negotiations and for settling disputes.

Additionally, it is the WTO's duty to review the national trade policies, and to ensure the coherence and transparency of trade policies through surveillance in global economic policy-making. Another priority of the WTO is the assistance of developing, least-developed and low-income countries in transition to adjust to WTO rules and disciplines through technical cooperation and training.The WTO is also a center of economic research and analysis: regular assessments of the global trade picture in its annual publications and research reports on specific topics are produced by the organization. Finally, the WTO cooperates closely with the two other components of the Bretton Woods system, the IMF and the World Bank.

Principles of the trading systemThe WTO establishes a framework for trade policies; it does not define or specify outcomes. That is, it is concerned with setting the rules of the trade policy games.Five principles are of particular importance in understanding both the pre-1994 GATT and the WTO:

1. Non-Discrimination. It has two major components: the most favoured nation (MFN) rule, and the national treatment policy. Both are embedded in the main WTO rules on goods, services, and intellectual property, but their precise scope and nature differ across these areas. The MFN rule requires that a WTO member must apply the same

conditions on all trade with other WTO members, i.e. a WTO member has to grant the most favorable conditions under which it allows trade in a certain product type to all other WTO members. "Grant someone a special favour and you have to do the same for all other WTO members."National treatment means that imported and locally-produced goods should be treated equally (at least after the foreign goods have entered the market) and was introduced to tackle non-tariff barriers to trade (e.g. technical standards, security standards et al. discriminating against imported goods).

2. Reciprocity. It reflects both a desire to limit the scope of free-riding that may arise because of the MFN rule, and a desire to obtain better access to foreign markets. A related point is that for a nation to negotiate, it is necessary that the gain from doing so be greater than the gain available from unilateral liberalization; reciprocal concessions intend to ensure that such gains will materialize.

3. Binding and enforceable commitments. The tariff commitments made by WTO members in a multilateral trade negotiation and on accession are enumerated in a schedule (list) of concessions. These schedules establish "ceiling bindings": a country can change its bindings, but only after negotiating with its trading partners, which could mean compensating them for loss of trade. If satisfaction is not obtained, the complaining country may invoke the WTO dispute settlement procedures.

4. Transparency. The WTO members are required to publish their trade regulations, to maintain institutions allowing for the review of administrative decisions affecting trade, to respond to requests for information by other members, and to notify changes in trade policies to the WTO. These internal transparency requirements are supplemented and facilitated by periodic country-specific reports (trade policy reviews) through the Trade Policy Review Mechanism (TPRM). The WTO system tries also to improve predictability and stability, discouraging the use of quotas and other measures used to set limits on quantities of imports.

5. Safety values. In specific circumstances, governments are able to restrict trade. There are three types of provisions in this direction: articles allowing for the use of trade measures to attain noneconomic objectives; articles aimed at ensuring "fair competition"; and provisions permitting intervention in trade for economic reasons….

2.3. The multilateral trading system-past, present and futureThe World Trade Organization came into being in 1995. One of the youngest of the international organizations, the WTO is the successor to the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) established in the wake of the Second World War. So while the WTO is still young, the multilateral trading system that was originally set up under GATT is well over 50 years old. The past 50 years have seen an exceptional growth in world trade. Merchandise exports grew on average by 6% annually. Total trade in 1997 was 14-times the level of 1950. GATT and the WTO have helped to create a strong and prosperous trading system contributing to unprecedented growth. The system was developed through a series of trade negotiations, or rounds, held under GATT. The first rounds dealt mainly with tariff reductions but later negotiations included other areas such as anti-dumping and non-tariff measures. The last round–the 1986-94 Uruguay Round–led to the WTO’s creation. The negotiations did not end there. Some continued after the end of the Uruguay Round. In February 1997 agreement was reached on telecommunications services, with 69 governments agreeing to wide-ranging liberalization measures that went beyond those agreed in the Uruguay Round. In the same year 40 governments successfully concluded negotiations for tariff-free trade in information technology products, and 70 members concluded a financial services deal covering more than 95% of trade in banking,

insurance, securities and financial information. In 2000, new talks started on agriculture and services. These have now been incorporated into a broader work programmed, the Doha Development Agenda (DDA), launched at the fourth WTO Ministerial Conference in Doha, Qatar, in November 2001. The agenda adds negotiations and other work on non-agricultural tariffs, trade and environment, WTO rules such as anti-dumping and subsidies, investment, competition policy, trade facilitation, transparency in government procurement, intellectual property, and a range of issues raised by developing countries as difficulties they face in implementing the present WTO agreements.

2.4. WTO Agreements How can you ensure that trade is as fair as possible, and as free as is practical? By negotiating rules and abiding by them. The WTO’s rules–the agreements–are the result of negotiations between the members. The current set were the outcome of the 1986-94 Uruguay Round negotiations which included a major revision of the original General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT). GATT is now the WTO’s principal rule-book for trade in goods. The Uruguay Round also created new rules for dealing with trade in services, relevant aspects of intellectual property, dispute settlement, and trade policy reviews. The complete set runs to some 30,000 pages consisting of about 60 agreements and separate commitments (called schedules) made by individual members in specific areas such as lower customs duty rates and services market-opening. Through these agreements, WTO members operate a non-discriminatory trading system that spells out their rights and their obligations. Each country receives guarantees that its exports will be treated fairly and consistently in other countries’ markets. Each promises to do the same for imports into its own market. The system also gives developing countries some flexibility in implementing their commitments.GoodsIt all began with trade in goods. From 1947 to 1994, GATT was the forum for negotiating lower customs duty rates and other trade barriers; the text of the General Agreement spelt out important rules, particularly non-discrimination. Since 1995, the updated GATT has become the WTO’s umbrella agreement for trade in goods. It has annexes dealing with specific sectors such as agriculture and textiles, and with specific issues such as state trading, product standards, subsidies and actions taken against dumping.

ServicesBanks, insurance firms, telecommunications companies, tour operators, hotel chains and transport companies looking to do business abroad can now enjoy the same principles of freer and fairer trade that originally only applied to trade in goods. These principles appear in the new General Agreement on Trade in Services (GATS). WTO members have also made individual commitments under GATS stating which of their services sectors they are willing to open to foreign competition, and how open those markets are.

Intellectual property The WTO’s intellectual property agreement amounts to rules for trade and investment in ideas and creativity. The rules state how copyrights, patents, trademarks, geographical names used to identify products, industrial designs, integrated circuit layout-designs and undisclosed information such as trade secrets–“intellectual property”–should be protected when trade is involved.

Dispute settlementThe WTO’s procedure for resolving trade quarrels under the Dispute Settlement Understanding is vital for enforcing the rules and therefore for ensuring that trade flows smoothly. Countries bring disputes to the WTO if they think their rights under the agreements are being infringed. Judgments by specially-appointed independent experts are based on interpretations of the agreements and individual countries’ commitments. The system encourages countries to settle their differences through consultation. Failing that, they can follow a carefully mapped out, stage-by-stage procedure that includes the possibility of a ruling by a panel of experts, and the chance to appeal the ruling on legal grounds. Confidence in the system is borne out by the number of cases brought to the WTO–more than 300 cases in ten years compared to the 300 disputes dealt with during the entire life of GATT (1947-94).

Policy preview

The Trade Policy Review Mechanism’s purpose is to improve transparency, to create a greater understanding of the policies that countries are adopting, and to assess their impact. Many members also see the reviews as constructive feedback on their policies. All WTO members must undergo periodic scrutiny, each review containing reports by the country concerned and the WTO Secretariat.

Developing countries

Development and tradeOver three quarters of WTO members are developing or least developed countries. All WTO agreements contain special provision for them, including longer time periods to implement agreements and commitments, measures to increase their trading opportunities, provisions requiring all WTO members to safeguard their trade interests, and support to help them build the infrastructure for WTO work, handle disputes, and implement technical standards.The 2001 Ministerial Conference in Doha set out tasks, including negotiations, for a wide range of issues concerning developing countries. Some people call the new negotiations the Doha Development Round.Before that, in 1997, a high-level meeting on trade initiatives and technical assistance for least-developed countries resulted in an “integrated framework” involving six intergovernmental agencies, to help least-developed countries increase their ability to trade, and some additional preferential market access agreements.

A WTO committee on trade and development, assisted by a subcommittee on least-developed countries, looks at developing countries’ special needs. Its responsibility includes implementation of the agreements, technical cooperation, and the increased participation of developing countries in the global trading system.

2.5. GATT RoundsThe GATT years: from Havana to MarrakeshThe WTO’s creation on 1 January 1995 marked the biggest reform of international trade since after the Second World War. It also brought to reality — in an updated form — the failed attempt in 1948 to create an International Trade Organization. Much of the history of those 47 years was written in Geneva. But it also traces a journey that spanned the continents, from that hesitant start in 1948 in Havana (Cuba), via Annecy (France), Torquay (UK), Tokyo (Japan), Punta del Este (Uruguay), Montreal (Canada), Brussels (Belgium) and finally to Marrakesh (Morocco) in 1994. During that period, the trading system came under GATT, salvaged from the aborted attempt to create the ITO. GATT helped establish a strong and prosperous multilateral trading system that became more and more liberal through rounds of trade negotiations. But by the 1980s the system needed a thorough overhaul. This led to the Uruguay Round, and ultimately to the WTO.

GATT: ‘provisional’ for almost half a centuryFrom 1948 to 1994, the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) provided the rules for much of world trade and presided over periods that saw some of the highest growth rates in international commerce. It seemed well-established, but throughout those 47 years, it was a provisional agreement and organization.

The original intention was to create a third institution to handle the trade side of international economic cooperation, joining the two “Bretton Woods” institutions, the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund. Over 50 countries participated in negotiations to create an International Trade Organization (ITO) as a specialized agency of the United Nations. The draft ITO Charter was ambitious. It extended beyond world trade disciplines, to include rules on employment, commodity agreements, restrictive business practices, international investment, and services. The aim was to create the ITO at a UN Conference on Trade and Employment in Havana, Cubain 1947.

Meanwhile, 15 countries had begun talks in December 1945 to reduce and bind customs tariffs. With the Second World War only recently ended, they wanted to give an early boost to trade liberalization, and to begin to correct the legacy of protectionist measures which remained in place from the early 1930s.

This first round of negotiations resulted in a package of trade rules and 45,000 tariff concessions affecting $10 billion of trade, about one fifth of the world’s total. The group had expanded to 23 by the time the deal was signed on 30 October 1947. The tariff concessions came into effect by 30 June 1948 through a “Protocol of Provisional Application”. And so the new General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade was born, with 23 founding members (officially “contracting parties”).

The 23 were also part of the larger group negotiating the ITO Charter. One of the provisions of GATT says that they should accept some of the trade rules of the draft. This, they believed, should be done swiftly and “provisionally” in order to protect the value of the tariff concessions they had negotiated. They spelt out how they envisaged the relationship between GATT and the ITO Charter, but they also allowed for the possibility that the ITO might not be created. They were right. The Havana conference began on 21 November 1947, less than a month after GATT was signed. The ITO Charter was finally agreed in Havana in March 1948, but ratification in some national legislatures proved impossible. The most serious opposition was in the US Congress, even though the US government had been one of the driving forces. In 1950, the United States government announced that it would not seek Congressional ratification of the Havana Charter, and the ITO was effectively dead. So, the GATT became the only multilateral instrument governing international trade from 1948 until the WTO was established in 1995. For almost half a century, the GATT’s basic legal principles remained much as they were in 1948. There were additions in the form of a section on development added in the 1960s and “plurilateral” agreements (i.e. with voluntary membership) in the 1970s, and efforts to reduce tariffs further continued. Much of this was achieved through a series of multilateral negotiations known as “trade rounds” — the biggest leaps forward in international trade liberalization have come through these rounds which were held under GATT’s auspices.

In the early years, the 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. The eighth, the Uruguay Round of 1986–94, was the last and most extensive of all. It led to the WTO and a new set of agreements.

Did GATT Succeed?

GATT was provisional with a limited field of action, but its success over 47 years in promoting and securing the liberalization of much of world trade is incontestable. Continual reductions in tariffs alone helped spur very high rates of world trade growth during the 1950s and 1960s — around 8% a year on average. And the momentum of trade liberalization helped ensure that trade growth consistently out-paced production growth throughout the GATT era, a measure of countries’ increasing ability to trade with each other and to reap the benefits of trade. The rush of new members during the Uruguay Round demonstrated that the multilateral trading system was recognized as an anchor for development and an instrument of economic and trade reform.

But all was not well. As time passed new problems arose. The Tokyo Round in the 1970s was an attempt to tackle some of these but its achievements were limited. This was a sign of difficult times to come.GATT’s success in reducing tariffs to such a low level, combined with a series of economic recessions in the 1970s and early 1980s, drove governments to devise other forms of protection for sectors facing increased foreign competition. High rates of unemployment and constant factory closures led governments in Western Europe and North America to seek bilateral market-sharing arrangements with competitors and to embark on a subsidies race to maintain their holds on agricultural trade. Both these changes undermined GATT’s credibility and effectiveness.

The problem was not just a deteriorating trade policy environment. By the early 1980s the General Agreement was clearly no longer as relevant to the realities of world trade as it had been in the 1940s. For a start, world trade had become far more complex and important than 40 years before: the globalization of the world economy was underway, trade in services — not covered by GATT rules — was of major interest to more and more countries, and international investment had expanded. The expansion of services trade was also closely tied to further increases in world merchandise trade. In other respects, GATT had been found wanting. For instance, in agriculture, loopholes in the multilateral system were heavily exploited, and efforts at liberalizing agricultural trade met with little success. In the textiles and clothing sector, an exception to GATT’s normal disciplines was negotiated in the 1960s and early 1970s, leading to the Multifibre Arrangement. Even GATT’s institutional structure and its dispute settlement system were causing concern.

These and other factors convinced GATT members that a new effort to reinforce and extend the multilateral system should be attempted. That effort resulted in the Uruguay Round, the Marrakesh Declaration, and the creation of the WTO.

What happened to GATT?

The WTO replaced GATT as an international organization, but the General Agreement still exists as the WTO’s umbrella treaty for trade in goods, updated as a result of the Uruguay Round negotiations. Trade lawyers distinguish between GATT 1994, the updated parts of GATT, and GATT 1947, the original agreement which is still the heart of GATT 1994. Confusing? For most of us, it’s enough to refer simply to “GATT”.Rounds

Annecy Round - 1949The second round took place in 1949 in Annecy, France. 13 countries took part in the round. The main focus of the talks was more tariff reductions, around 5000 total.

Torquay Round - 1951The third round occurred in Torquay, England in 1951. 38 countries took part in the round. 8,700 tariff concessions were made totaling the remaining amount of tariffs to three-fourths of the tariffs which were in effect in 1948.

Geneva Round - 1955-1956

The fourth round returned to Geneva in 1955 and lasted until May 1956. 26 countries took part in the round. $2.5 billion in tariffs were eliminated or reduced.

Dillon Round - 1960-1962

The fifth round occurred once more in Geneva and lasted from 1960 to 1962. The talks were named after U.S. Treasury Secretary and former Under Secretary of State, Douglas Dillon, who

first proposed the talks. 26 countries took part in the round. Along with reducing over $4.9 billion in tariffs, it also yielded discussion relating to the creation of the European Economic Community (EEC).

Kennedy Round - 1964-1967The sixth round was the last to take place in Geneva from 1964 until 1967 and was named after the late US President Kennedy in his memory. 62 countries took part in the round. Concessions were made on $40 billion worth of tariffs. Some of the GATT negotiation rules were also more clearly defined

GATT and WTO trade rounds

Name Start Duration Countries Subjects covered Achievements

Geneva April 1947 7 months 23 TariffsSigning of GATT, 45,000 tariff concessions affecting $10 billion of trade

Annecy April 1949 5 months 13 Tariffs Countries exchanged some 5,000 tariff concessions

Torquay September 1950 8 months 38 Tariffs

Countries exchanged some 8,700 tariff concessions, cutting the 1948 tariff levels by 25%

Geneva II

January 1956 5 months 26

Tariffs, admission of Japan

$2.5 billion in tariff reductions

Dillon September 1960

11 months 26 Tariffs Tariff concessions worth $4.9

billion of world trade

Kennedy May 1964 37 months 62 Tariffs, Anti-

dumpingTariff concessions worth $40 billion of world trade

Tokyo September 1973

74 months 102

Tariffs, non-tariff measures, "framework" agreements

Tariff reductions worth more than $300 billion dollars achieved

Uruguay September 1986

87 months 123

Tariffs, non-tariff measures, rules, services, intellectual property, dispute settlement, textiles, agriculture, creation of WTO, etc

The round led to the creation of WTO, and extended the range of trade negotiations, leading to major reductions in tariffs (about 40%) and agricultural subsidies, an agreement to allow full access for textiles and clothing from developing countries, and an extension of intellectual property rights.

Doha November 2001 ? 141

Tariffs, non-tariff measures, agriculture, labor standards, environment, competition, investment, transparency, patents etc

The round is not yet concluded.

Tokyo Round - 1973-1979Reduced tariffs and established new regulations aimed at controlling the proliferation of non-tariff barriers and voluntary export restrictions. 102 countries countries took part in the round. Concessions were made on $190 billion worth.The Tokyo Round ‘codes’• Subsidies and countervailing measures — interpreting Articles 6, 16 and 23 of GATT• Technical barriers to trade — sometimes called the Standards Code• Import licensing procedures• Government procurement• Customs valuation — interpreting Article 7• Anti-dumping — interpreting Article 6, replacing the Kennedy Round code• Bovine Meat Arrangement• International Dairy Arrangement• Trade in Civil Aircraft

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 Round - 1986-1993

Uruguay Round

During the Doha Round, the US government blamed Brazil and India for being inflexible, and the EU for impeding agricultural imports.The President of Brazil, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, responded to the criticisms by arguing that progress will only be achieved if the richest countries (especially the US and EU) make deeper cuts in their agricultural subsidies, and further open their markets for agricultural goods.

The Uruguay Round began in 1986. It was the most ambitious round to date, hoping to expand the competence of the GATT to important new areas such as services, capital, intellectual property, textiles, and agriculture. 123 countries took part in the round.

It took seven and a half years, almost twice the original schedule. By the end, 123 countries were taking part. It covered almost all trade, from toothbrushes to pleasure boats, from banking to telecommunications, from the genes of wild rice to AIDS treatments. It was quite simply the largest trade negotiation ever, and most probably the largest negotiation of any kind in history.

At times it seemed doomed to fail. But in the end, the Uruguay Round brought about the biggest reform of the world’s trading system since GATT was created at the end of the Second World War. And yet, despite its troubled progress, the Uruguay Round did see some early results. Within only two years, participants had agreed on a package of cuts in import duties on tropical products — which are mainly exported by developing countries. They had also revised the rules for settling disputes, with some measures implemented on the spot. And they called for regular reports on GATT members’ trade policies, a move considered important for making trade regimes transparent around the world.

A round to end all rounds?The seeds of the Uruguay Round were sown in November 1982 at a ministerial meeting of GATT members in Geneva. Although the ministers intended to launch a major new negotiation, the conference stalled on agriculture and was widely regarded as a failure. In fact, the work programmed that the ministers agreed formed the basis for what was to become the Uruguay Round negotiating agenda. Nevertheless, it took four more years of exploring, clarifying issues and painstaking consensus-building, before ministers agreed to launch the new round. They did so in September 1986, in Punta del Este, Uruguay. They eventually accepted a negotiating agenda that covered virtually every outstanding trade policy issue. 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. It was the biggest negotiating mandate on trade ever agreed, and the ministers gave themselves four years to complete it.

Two years later, in December 1988, ministers met again in Montreal, Canada, for what was supposed to be an assessment of progress at the round’s half-way point. The purpose was to clarify the agenda for the remaining two years, but the talks ended in a deadlock that was not resolved until officials met more quietly in Geneva the following April. Despite the difficulty, during the Montreal meeting, ministers did agree a package of early results. These included some concessions on market access for tropical products — aimed at assisting developing countries — as well as a streamlined dispute settlement system, and the Trade Policy Review Mechanism which provided for the first comprehensive, systematic and regular reviews of national trade policies and practices of GATT members. The round was supposed to end when ministers met once more in Brussels, in December 1990. But they disagreed on how to reform agricultural trade and decided to extend the talks. The Uruguay Round entered its bleakest period.

Despite the poor political outlook, a considerable amount of technical work continued, leading to the first draft of a final legal agreement. This draft “Final Act” was compiled by the then GATT director-general, Arthur Dunkel, who chaired the negotiations at officials’ level. It was put on the table in Geneva in December 1991. The text fulfilled every part of the Punta Del Este mandate, with one exception — it did not contain the participating countries’ lists of commitments for cutting import duties and opening their services markets. The draft became the basis for the final agreement.

Over the following two years, the negotiations lurched between impending failures, to predictions of imminent success. Several deadlines came and went. New points of major conflict emerged to join agriculture: services, market access, anti-dumping rules, and the proposed creation of a new institution. Differences between the United States and European Union became central to hopes for a final, successful conclusion.

In November 1992, the US and EU settled most of their differences on agriculture in a deal known informally as the “Blair House accord”. By July 1993 the “Quad” (US, EU, Japan and Canada) announced significant progress in negotiations on tariffs and related subjects (“market access”). It took until 15 December 1993 for every issue to be finally resolved and for negotiations on market access for goods and services to be concluded (although some final touches was completed in talks on market access a few weeks later). On 15 April 1994, the deal was signed by ministers from most of the 123 participating governments at a meeting in Marrakesh, Morocco. The delay had some merits. It allowed some negotiations to progress further than would have been possible in 1990: for example some aspects of services and intellectual property, and the creation of the WTO itself. But the task had been immense, and negotiation-fatigue was felt in trade bureaucracies around the world. The difficulty of reaching agreement on a complete package containing almost the entire range of current trade issues led some to conclude that a negotiation on this scale would never again be possible. Yet, the Uruguay Round agreements contain timetables for new negotiations on a number of topics. And by 1996, some countries were openly calling for a new round early in the next century. The response was mixed; but the Marrakesh agreement did already include commitments to reopen

negotiations on agriculture and services at the turn of the century. These began in early 2000 and were incorporated into the Doha Development Agenda in late 2001.

The post-Uruguay Round built-in agenda

Many of the Uruguay Round agreements set timetables for future work. Part of this “built-in agenda” started almost immediately. In some areas, it included new or further negotiations. In other areas, it included assessments or reviews of the situation at specified times. Some negotiations were quickly completed, notably in basic telecommunications, financial services. (Member governments also swiftly agreed a deal for freer trade in information technology products, an issue outside the “built-in -agenda”.) The agenda originally built into the Uruguay Round agreements has seen additions and modifications. A number of items are now part of the Doha Agenda, some of them updated. There were well over 30 items in the original built-in agenda.

Agriculture was essentially exempted from previous agreements as it was given special status in the areas of import quotas and export subsidies, with only mild caveats. However, by the time of the Uruguay round, many countries considered the exception of agriculture to be sufficiently glaring that they refused to sign a new deal without some movement on agricultural products. These fourteen countries came to be known as the "Cairns Group", and included mostly small and medium sized agricultural exporters such as Australia, Brazil, Canada, Indonesia, and New Zealand.

The 1986 agenda

The 15 original Uruguay Round subjectsTariffs

Non-tariff barriersNatural resource products

Textiles and clothingAgriculture

Tropical productsGATT articles

Tokyo Round codesAnti-dumping

SubsidiesIntellectual propertyInvestment measures

Dispute settlementThe GATT system

Services

The Uruguay Round — Key datesSep 86 Punta del Este: launchDec 88 Montreal: ministerial mid-term reviewApr 89 Geneva: mid-term review completedDec 90 Brussels: “closing” ministerial meeting ends in deadlockDec 91 Geneva: first draft of Final Act completedNov 92 Washington: US and EC achieve “Blair House” breakthrough on agricultureJul 93 Tokyo: Quad achieve market access breakthrough at G7 summitDec 93 Geneva: most negotiations end (some market access talks remain)Apr 94 Marrakesh: agreements signedJan 95 Geneva: WTO created, agreements take effect.

This is a selection of highlights:1996• Maritime services: market access negotiations to end (30 June 1996, suspended to 2000, now part of Doha Development Agenda)• Services and environment: deadline for working party report (ministerial conference, December 1996)• Government procurement of services: negotiations start

1997• Basic telecoms: negotiations end (15 February)• Financial services: negotiations end (30 December)• Intellectual property, creating a multilateral system of notification and registration of geographical indications for wines: negotiations start, now part of Doha Development Agenda.

1998• Textiles and clothing: new phase begins 1 January• Services (emergency safeguards): results of negotiations on emergency safeguards to take effect (by 1 January 1998, deadline now March 2004)• Rules of origin: Work programmed on harmonization of rules of origin to be completed(20 July 1998)• Government procurement: further negotiations start, for improving rules and procedures (by end of 1998)• Dispute settlement: full review of rules and procedures (to start by end of 1998)

1999• Intellectual property: certain exceptions to patentability and protection of plant varieties: review starts

2000

• Agriculture: negotiations start, now part of Doha Development Agenda• Services: new round of negotiations start, now part of Doha Development Agenda• Tariff bindings: review of definition of “principle supplier” having negotiating rights under GATT Art 28 on modifying bindings• Intellectual property: first of two-yearly reviews of the implementation of the agreement

2002• Textiles and clothing: new phase begins 1 January

2005• Textiles and clothing: full integration into GATT and agreement expires 1 January

The Doha agenda

Venue

The work programme lists 21 subjects. The original deadline of 1 January 2005 was missed. So was the next unofficial target of the end of 2006

The declaration of the "MC4 in Doha", named for the Qatari capital (Doha) has provided the mandate for negotiations on a number of issues on agriculture, concerning the implementation of the agreements which had to be completed in 2000 originally. However, the declaration set 1 January 2005 as the deadline for completing all but two of the agreements.The Doha round aims to cut trade barriers across a wide range of sectors and is supposed to address the needs of developing countries, for which agriculture is a particularly sensitive topic. Developing countries say farm trade needs to be tackled first because it is so important to their economies and because it is heavily protected in many rich countries. The 25-nation European Union, in particular, has been under fire for not making further cuts to its farm tariffs and subsidies. A series of meetings between ministers has failed to break the deadlock. The EU says equal attention needs to be paid to manufactured goods, which far outweigh agriculture's importance in global trade.In the 2003 MC5 in Cancún, Mexico, it was expected all members would reach consensus on how to complete the remaining agreements. However, the meeting got stuck because of discord created by agricultural issues and ended in deadlock on Singapore issues. The original 1 January 2005 deadline was missed. After that, members aimed at finishing the negotiations by the end of 2006.

The shelved Doha development agenda was therefore carried on in the MC6 in Hong Kong. That is why speculation on the chances of success of the MC6 had been rife in the months leading up to the conference in Hong Kong.

Agenda Market access: supporters of a new round demanded sharp reductions in tariffs on

goods. Domestic support: demands for end of direct payments to farmers to produce their

goods. Export subsidies: European Union has promised to end its subsidies that depress

international prices. However, no exact date has been provided so far. Services: push for lifting of restrictions on services sector. Singapore issues: demands from some rich nations for more transparent laws and

better legal protection for trading companies. They include issues in investment, competition, government procurement, and trade facilitation.

Principles of the negotiations Single undertaking: Every item of the negotiation is part of a whole and indivisible

package and cannot be agreed separately. In other words, Nothing is agreed until everything is agreed.

Participation: The negotiations are open to all WTO members and to observer governments negotiating or intending to negotiate membership. But decisions on the outcomes are only taken by members.

Transparency: The negotiations have to be transparent. Special and differential treatment: The negotiations have to take fully into account the

principle of special and differential treatment for developing and least-developed countries.

Sustainable development: The Trade and Development and Trade Environment identify and debate developmental and environmental aspects of the negotiations to ensure that sustainable development is appropriately reflected.

Subjects not negotiated: Elements of the work programme which do not involve negotiations are also accorded a high priority. The General Council reported on their progress to the Fifth Ministerial Conference in 2003.

Implementation-related issues and concerns (par 12)“Implementation” is short-hand for developing countries’ problems in implementing the current WTO Agreements, i.e. the agreements arising from the Uruguay Round negotiations. No area of WTO work received more attention or generated more controversy during nearly three years of hard bargaining before the Doha Ministerial Conference. Around 100 issues were raised during that period. The result was a two-pronged approach:

• More than 40 items under 12 headings were settled at or before the Doha conference for immediate delivery.• The vast majority of the remaining items immediately became the subject of negotiations.

This was spelt out in a separate ministerial decision on implementation, combined with paragraph 12 of the main Doha Declaration. The implementation decision includes the following (detailed explanations can be seen on the WTO website):

General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT)• Balance-of-payments exception: clarifying less stringent conditions in GATT for developing countries if they restrict imports in order to protect their balance-of-payments.• Market-access commitments: clarifying eligibility to negotiate or be consulted on quota allocation.

Agriculture• Rural development and food security for developing countries.• Least-developed and net food-importing developing countries.• Export credits, export credit guarantees or insurance programmes.• Tariff rate quotas.

Sanitary and phytosanitary (SPS) measures• More time for developing countries to comply with other countries’ new SPS measures.• Reasonable interval” between publication of a country’s new SPS measure and its entry into force.• Equivalence: putting into practice the principle that governments should accept that different measures used by other governments can be equivalent to their own measures for providing the same level of health protection for food, animals and plants.• Review of the SPS Agreement.• Developing countries’ participation in setting international SPS standards.• Financial and technical assistance. Textiles and clothing• “Effective” use of the agreement’s provisions on early integration of products into normal GATT rules, and elimination of quotas.• Restraint in anti-dumping actions.• The possibility of examining governments’ new rules of origin.• Members to consider favorable quota treatment for small suppliers and least developed countries and larger quotas in general.

Technical barriers to trade• Technical assistance for least-developed countries, and reviews of technical assistance in general.

• When possible, a six-month “reasonable interval” for developing countries to adapt to new measures.• The WTO director-general encouraged to continue efforts to help developing countries participate in setting international standards.

Trade-related investment measures (TRIMs)

The Goods Council is “to consider positively” requests from least-developed countries to extend the seven-year transition period for eliminating measures that are inconsistent with the agreement.

Anti-dumping (GATT Article 6)• No second anti-dumping investigation within a year unless circumstances have changed.• How to put into operation a special provision for developing countries (Article 15 of the Anti-Dumping Agreement), which recognizes that developed countries must give “special regard” to the situation of developing countries when considering applying anti-dumping measures.• Clarification sought on the time period for determining whether the volume of dumped imported products is negligible, and therefore no anti-dumping action should be taken.• Annual reviews of the agreement’s implementation to be improved.

Customs valuation (GATT Article 7)• Extending the deadline for developing countries to implement the agreement.• Dealing with fraud: how to cooperate in exchanging information, including on export values.

Rules of origin• Completing the harmonization of rules of origin among member governments.• Dealing with interim arrangements in the transition to the new, harmonized rules of origin.

Subsidies and countervailing measures• Sorting out how to determine whether some developing countries meet the test of being below US$1,000 per capita GNP allowing them to pay subsidies that require the recipient to export.• Noting proposed new rules allowing developing countries to subsidize under programmers that have “legitimate development goals” without having to face countervailing or other action.• Review of provisions on countervailing duty investigations.• Reaffirming that least-developed countries are exempt from the ban on export subsidies.• Directing the Subsidies Committee to extend the transition period for certain developing countries.

Trade-related aspects of intellectual property rights (TRIPS)• “Non-violation” complaints: the unresolved question of how to deal with possible TRIPS disputes involving loss of an expected benefit even if the TRIPS Agreement has not actually been violated.• Technology transfer to least-developed countries.

Cross-cutting issues

• Which special and differential treatment provisions are mandatory? What are the implications of making mandatory those that are currently non-binding?• How can special and differential treatment provisions be made more effective?• How can special and differential treatment be incorporated in the new negotiations?• Developed countries are urged to grant preferences in a generalized and nondiscriminatory manner, i.e. to all developing countries rather than to a selected group.

Outstanding implementation issues• To be handled under paragraph 12 of the main Doha Declaration.

Final provisions• The WTO Director-General is to ensure that WTO technical assistance gives priority to helping developing countries implement existing WTO obligations, and to increase their capacity to participate more effectively in future negotiations.• The WTO Secretariat is to cooperate more closely with other international organizations so that technical assistance is more efficient and effective.

The implementation decision is tied into the main Doha Declaration, where ministers agreed on a future work programme to deal with unsettled implementation questions. “Negotiations on outstanding implementation issues shall be an integral part of the Work Programme” in the coming years, they declared. In the declaration, the ministers established a two-track approach. Those issues for which there was an agreed negotiating mandate in the declaration would be dealt with under the terms of that mandate.

Agriculture

Negotiations on agriculture began in early 2000, under Article 20 of the WTO Agriculture Agreement. By November 2001 and the Doha Ministerial Conference, 121 governments had submitted a large number of negotiating proposals. These negotiations have continued, but now with the mandate given by the Doha Declaration, which also includes a series of deadlines. The declaration builds on the work already undertaken, confirms and elaborates the objectives, and sets a timetable. Agriculture is now part of the single undertaking in which virtually all the linked negotiations were to end by 1 January 2005, now with the unofficial target of the end of 2006.

The declaration reconfirms the long-term objective already agreed in the present WTO Agreement: to establish a fair and market-oriented trading system through a programme of fundamental reform. The programme encompasses strengthened rules, and specific commitments on government support and protection for agriculture.

The purpose is to correct and prevent restrictions and distortions in world agricultural markets. Without prejudging the outcome, member governments commit themselves to comprehensive negotiations aimed at:• Market access: substantial reductions• exports subsidies: reductions of, with a view to phasing out, all forms of these (in the 1 August 2004 “framework” members agreed to eliminate export subsidies by a date to be negotiated)

• domestic support: substantial reductions for supports that distort trade (in the 1 August 2004 “framework”, developed countries pledged to slash trade-distorting domestic subsidies by 20% from the first day any Doha Agenda agreement is implemented).

The declaration makes special and differential treatment for developing countries integral throughout the negotiations, both in countries’ new commitments and in any relevant new or revised rules and disciplines. It says the outcome should be effective in practice and should enable developing countries to meet their needs, in particular in food security and rural development. The ministers also take note of the non-trade concerns (such as environmental protection, food security, rural development, etc) reflected in the negotiating proposals already submitted. They confirm that the negotiations will take these into account, as provided for in the Agriculture Agreement. A first step along the road to final agreement was reached on 1 August 2004 when members agreed on a “framework” (Annex A of the General Council decision). The negotiations take place in “special sessions” of the Agriculture Committee.

Relationship between trade and investmentThis is a “Singapore issue” i.e. a working group set up by the 1996 Singapore Ministerial Conference has been studying it. In the period up to the 2003 Ministerial Conference, the declaration instructs the working group to focus on clarifying the scope and definition of the issues, transparency, non-discrimination, ways of preparing negotiated commitments, development provisions, exceptions and balance-of-payments safeguards, consultation and dispute settlement. The negotiated commitments would be modelled on those made in services, which specify where commitments are being made — “positive lists” — rather than making broad commitments and listing exceptions. The declaration also spells out a number of principles such as the need to balance the interests of countries where foreign investment originates and where it is invested, countries’ right to regulate investment, development, public interest and individual countries’ specific circumstances. It also emphasizes support and technical cooperation for developing and least-developed countries, and coordination with other international organizations such as the UN Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD). Since the 1 August 2004 decision, this subject has been dropped from the Doha agenda.

Interaction between trade and competition policy

This is another “Singapore issue”, with a working group set up in 1996 to study the subject. In the period up to the 2003 Ministerial Conference, the declaration instructs the working group to focus on clarifying:• Core principles including transparency, non-discrimination and procedural fairness, and provisions on “hardcore” cartels (i.e. cartels that are formally set up)• Ways of handling voluntary cooperation on competition policy among WTO member governments• Support for progressive reinforcement of competition institutions in developing countries through capacity building.

The declaration says the work must take full account of developmental needs. It includes technical cooperation and capacity building, on such topics as policy analysis and development, so that developing countries are better placed to evaluate the implications of closer multilateral cooperation for various developmental objectives. Cooperation with other organizations such as the UN Conference on Trade andDevelopment (UNCTAD) is also included. Since the 1 August 2004 decision, this subject has been dropped from the Doha agenda.

Transparency in government procurement A third “Singapore issue” that was handled by a working group set up by the Singapore Ministerial Conference in 1996. The Doha Declaration says that the “negotiations shall be limited to the transparency aspects and therefore will not restrict the scope for countries to give preferences to domestic supplies and suppliers” — it is separate from the plurilateral Government Procurement Agreement. The declaration also stresses development concerns, technical assistance and capacity building. Since the 1 August 2004 decision, this subject has been dropped from the Doha agenda.

Trade facilitation A fourth “Singapore issue” kicked off by the 1996 Ministerial Conference. The declaration recognizes the case for “further expediting the movement, release and clearance of goods, including goods in transit, and the need for enhanced technical assistance and capacity building in this area”. In the period until the Fifth Ministerial Conference in 2003, the WTO Goods Council, which had been working on this subject since 1997, “shall review and as appropriate, clarify and improve relevant aspects of Articles 5 (‘Freedom of Transit’), 8 (‘Fees and Formalities Connected with Importation and Exportation’) and 10 (‘Publication and Administration of Trade Regulations’) of the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT 1994) and identify the trade facilitation needs and priorities of Members, in particular developing and least-developed countries”. Those issues were cited in the 1 August 2004 decision that broke the Cancún deadlock. Members agreed to start negotiations on trade facilitation, but not the three other Singapore issues.

Before DohaBefore the Doha Ministerial, negotiations had already been underway on trade in agriculture and trade in services. These on-going negotiations had been required under the last round of multilateral trade negotiations (the Uruguay Round, 1986-1994). However, some countries, including the United States, wanted to expand the agriculture and services talks to allow trade-offs and thus achieve greater trade liberalization.The first WTO Ministerial Conference, which was held in Singapore in 1996, established permanent working groups on four issues:

transparency in government procurement, trade facilitation (customs issues), trade and investment, and trade and competition. These became known as the Singapore issues. This issues were pushed at successive Ministerials by the European Union, Japan and Korea, and opposed by most developing countries. Since no agreement was reached, the developed nations pushed that any new trade negotiations must include these issues.The negotiations was intended to start at the Ministerial Conference of 1999 in Seattle, United States and be called the the Millennium Round but due to several different events including large protests that broke outside the conference, the negotiations were never started.Due to the failures of the Millennium Round, it was decided that negotiations would not start again until the next Ministerial Conference in 2001 in Doha, Qatar.Just months before the Doha Ministerial, the United States had been attacked by terrorists on September 11, 2001. Some government officials called for greater political cohesion and saw the trade negotiations as a means toward that end. Some officials thought that a new round of multilateral trade negotiations could help a world economy weakened by recession and terrorism-related uncertainty. According to the WTO, the year 2001 showed “...the lowest growth in output in more than two decades,”and world trade contracted that year.

Doha, 2001The Doha Round of WTO negotiations began in November 2001. The new round was instead launched at a ministerial conference in Doha, Qatar. The new trade agenda of the developed world was dubbed the Doha Development Agenda and, from there, all countries were committed to negotiations opening agricultural and manufacturing markets, as well as trade-in-services (GATS) negotiations and expanded intellectual property regulation (TRIPS). The intent of the round, according to its proponents, was to make trade rules fairer for developing countries. Opponents charged that the round would expand a system of trade rules that were bad for development and interfered excessively with countries' domestic "policy space".The round was set to be concluded in four years in December 2005 — after two more ministerial conferences had produced a final draft declaration.

Geneva, 2004

The aftermath of Cancun was one of standstill and stocktaking. Negotiations were suspended for the remainder of 2003. Starting in early 2004, U.S. Trade Representative Robert Zoellick pushed for the resumption of negotiations by offering a proposal that would focus on market access, including an elimination of agricultural export subsidies. This intervention was credited at the time with reviving interest in the negotiations, and negotiations resumed in March 2004. In the months leading up to the talks in Geneva, the EU accepted the elimination of agricultural export subsidies “by date certain”. The Singapore issues were moved off the Doha agenda. Compromise was also achieved over the negotiation of the Singapore issues as the EU and others decided. Developing countries too played an active part in negotiations this year, first by India and Brazil negotiating directly with the developed countries (as the so-called “non-party of five”) on agriculture, and second by working toward acceptance of trade facilitation as a subject for negotiation.

With these issues pushed aside, the negotiators in Geneva were able to concentrate on moving forward with the Doha Round. After intense negotiations in late July 2004, WTO members reached what has become known as the Framework Agreement(sometimes called the July Package) , which provides broad guidelines for completing the Doha round negotiations. The agreement contains a 4-page declaration, with four annexes (A-D) covering agriculture, non-agricultural market access, services, and trade facilitation, respectively. In addition, the agreement acknowledges the activities of other negotiating groups (such as those on rules, dispute settlement, and intellectual property) and exhorts them to fulfill their Doha round negotiating objectives. The agreement also abandoned the January 1, 2005 deadline for the negotiations and set December 2005 as the date for the 6th Ministerial to be held in Hong Kong.

Paris, 2005Trade negotiators wanted to make tangible progress before the December 2005 WTO meeting in Hong Kong, and held a session of negotiations in Paris in May 2005. Paris talks were hanging over a few issues: France protested moves to cut subsidies to farmers, while the U.S., Australia, the EU, Brazil and India failed to agree on issues relating to chicken, beef and rice. Most of the sticking points were small technical issues, making trade negotiators fear that agreement on large politically risky issues will be substantially harder.

Hong Kong, 2005

The Hong Kong Convention Center, which was the site of the Sixth WTO Ministerial Conference. The Sixth WTO Ministerial Conference took place in Hong Kong, December 13 to 18, 2005. Although a flurry of negotiations took place in the fall of 2005, WTO Director-General Pascal Lamy announced in November 2005 that a comprehensive agreement on modalities would not be forthcoming in Hong Kong, and that the talks would “take stock” of the negotiations and would try to reach agreements in negotiating sectors where convergence was reported.

Trade ministers representing most of the world's governments reached a deal that sets a deadline for eliminating subsidies of agricultural exports by 2013. The final declaration from the talks, which resolved several issues that have stood in the way of a global trade agreement, also requires industrialized countries to open their markets to goods from the world's poorest nations, a goal of the United Nations for many years. The declaration gave fresh impetus for negotiators to try to finish a comprehensive set of global free trade rules by the end of 2006. Pascal Lamy, Director General of the WTO, said, "I now believe it is possible, which I did not a month ago. The conference pushed back the expected completion of the round until the end of 2006.

Geneva, 2006

The July 2006 talks in Geneva failed to reach an agreement about reducing farming subsidies and lowering import taxes, and continuation of the negotiations will take months to resume.

A successful outcome of the Doha round has become increasingly unlikely, because the broad trade authority granted under the Trade Act of 2002 to U.S. president George W. Bush were set to expire in 2007.Any trade pact will then have to be approved by the U.S. Congress with the possibility of amendments, which creates an additional burden on the U.S. negotiators and decreases the willingness of other countries to participate. Hong Kong offered to mediate the collapsed trade liberalisation talks. Director-General of Trade and Industry, Raymond Young, says the territory, which hosted the last round of Doha negotiations, has a "moral high-ground" on free trade that allows it to play the role of "honest broker".

Potsdam, 2007

In June 2007, negotiations within the Doha round broke down at a conference in Potsdam, as a major impasse occurred between the US, the EU, India and Brazil. The main disagreement was over opening up agricultural and industrial markets in various countries and also how to cut rich nation farm subsidies.

Geneva, 2008

On July 21, 2008, negotiations started again at the WTO's HQ in Geneva on the Doha round but stalled after nine days of negotiations over the refusal to compromise over the special safeguard mechanism.

Negotiations had continued since the last conference in June 2007.Pascal Lamy, WTO’s director-general, said before the start of the conference, the odds of success were over 50%. Around 40 ministers attended the negotiations, which were only expected to last five days but instead lasted nine days.Kamal Nath, India's Commerce Minister, was absent from the first few days of the conference due to a vote of confidence being conducted in India's Parliament.On the second day of the conference, U.S. Trade Representative Susan Schwab announced that the U.S. would cap its farm subsidies at $15 billion a year, from $18.2 billion in 2006. The proposal was on the condition that countries such as Brazil and India drop their objections to various aspects of the roundThe U.S. and the EU also offered an increase in the number of temporary work visas for professional workers.After one week of negotiations, many considered agreement to be 'within reach'. However, there were disagreements on issues including special protection for Chinese and Indian farmers and African and Caribbean banana imports to the EU. India and China's hard stance regarding tariffs and subsidies was severely criticized by the United States.In response, India's Commerce Minister said "I'm not risking the livelihood of millions of farmers.

2.6. Formal structureAccording to WTO rules, all WTO members may participate in all councils, committees, etc., except the Appellate Body, Dispute Settlement panels, and plurilateral committees. Decisions within the WTO are made by members, not staff, and they are made by consensus, not by formal vote.

WTO structureAll WTO members may participate in all councils, committees, etc, except Appellate Body, Dispute Settlement panels, Textiles Monitoring Body, and plurilateral committees.

2.7. Ministerial ConferenceThe topmost decision-making body of the WTO is the Ministerial Conference, which tends to meet every two years. There has been six conferences, with the last one being in December 2005. The conferences are attended by all members of the WTO. The Ministerial Conference can make decisions on all matters under any of the multilateral trade agreements . The first meeting of the Ministerial Conference was held in Singapore on 9 December-13, 1996.

First ministerial conference

Director-General Renato Ruggiero addressing the First Ministerial Conference in Singapore in December 1996. This was the first meeting of the main WTO body.

The inaugural ministerial conference was held in Singapore in 1996. 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".

Second ministerial conference

Was held in Geneva in Switzerland.

Third ministerial conference

The WTO Ministerial Conference of 1999 was a meeting of the World Trade Organization, convened at the Washington State Convention and Trade Center in Seattle, Washington, USA, over the course of three days, beginning November 30, 1999. A week before the meeting, delegates admitted failure to agree on the agenda and the presence of deep disagreements with developing countries. Intended as the launch of a new round of trade negotiations that would have been called "The Millennial Round", the negotiations were marred by poor organisation and inappropriate management of large, non-violent street protests. Developing country representatives became resentful and uncooperative on being excluded from talks as the United States and the European Union attempted to cement a mutual deal on agriculture. The negotiations collapsed and were reconvened at Doha, Qatar, in November 2001. The Doha venue enabled on-site public protest to be excluded. Necessary agenda concessions were made to include the interests of developing countries, which were learning how to form their own powerful negotiating blocs. Thus, the current round is called the Doha Development Round.

The third conference in Seattle, Washington ended in failure, with massive demonstrations and police and National Guard crowd control efforts drawing worldwide attention.

Views on the conference

According to Seattle Post-Intelligencer sports columnist Art Thiel, the Seattle establishment had lobbied hard for the event, but the populace of the city were not generally supportive of them in this. As the conference was coming to a close, Thiel wrote, "We blew this WTO gig. Big time. Because our civic ego ran amok. […] Somewhere, somehow, there has been created a profound disconnect between our wealth-enamored leadership and the vast majority of Puget Sound-area residents. […] [T]here was no debate on WTO, only a wink and a pat on the head from the poobahs.

A feature film, titled Battle in Seattle, is based on the riots and will be released in September 2008. It stars Charlize Theron, Woody Harrelson, Ray Liotta, Michelle Rodriguez, Joshua Jackson, and Connie Nielsen. The name is taken from the colloquial term "Battle in Seattle" for the conference.

Protest activity surrounding the WTO Ministerial Conference of 1999, which was to be the launch of a new millennial round of trade negotiations, occurred on November 30, 1999 (nicknamed "N30" on similar lines to J18 and similar mobilisations), when the World Trade Organization (WTO) convened at the Washington State Convention and Trade Center in Seattle, Washington, United States. The negotiations were quickly overshadowed by massive and controversial street protests outside the hotels and the Seattle Convention Center, in what became the second phase of the anti-globalization movement in the United States. The scale of the demonstrations—even the lowest estimates put the crowd at over 40,000—dwarfed any previous demonstration in the United States against a world meeting of any of the organizations generally associated with economic globalization (such as the WTO, the International Monetary Fund (IMF), or the World Bank). The events are sometimes referred to as the Battle of Seattle.

Fourth ministerial conference

The Fourth Ministerial Conference of the World Trade Organization, also known as the WTO Fourth Ministerial Conference, was held at the Sheraton Doha Hotel and Resort, Doha, Qatar from November 9-13, 2001. At this conference, ministers from all WTO members launched the Doha Development Agenda.

At the conference, trade ministers agreed to undertake a new round of multilateral trade negotiations.The ministers passed two declarations. The first, the main declaration folded the on-going negotiations in agriculture and services into a broader agenda, which is commonly known as the Doha Development Round. In addition. the Doha agenda included the topic of industrial tariffs, topics of interest to developing countries, changes to WTO rules, and other provisions. The second declaration dealt with the Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights(TRIPS) and allow government to be flexible of TRIPS to deal with health problems.

The meeting, which took place just two months after the World Trade Center attack. As a result, some government officials called for greater political cohesion and saw the trade negotiations as a means toward that end. Some officials thought that a new round of multilateral trade negotiations could help a world economy weakened by recession and terrorism-related uncertainty.

China became the 143rd member to join the WTO. It took 15 years and 5 months of negotiations before China was approved to join.

Was held in Doha In Persian Gulf nation of Qatar. The Doha Development Round was launched at the conference. The conference also approved the joining of China, which became the 143 member to join.

Fifth ministerial conference

The Fifth Ministerial Conference of the World Trade Organization, also known as the WTO Fifth Ministerial Conference and abbreviated as MC5, was held at the Cancún Centro de Convenciones, Cancún, Mexico from September 10 to September 14, 2003.

The conference was aimed at forging agreement on the Doha Development 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.

The ministerial conference was held in Cancún, Mexico, aiming 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.

Sixth ministerial conference

The sixth WTO Conference Ministerial was held in Hong Kong from 13 December – 18 December 2005. It was considered vital if the four-year-old Doha Development Agenda negotiations were to move forward sufficiently to conclude the round in 2006. In this meeting, countries agreed to phase out all their agricultural export subsidies by the end of 2013, and terminate any cotton export subsidies by the end of 2006. Further concessions to developing countries included an agreement to introduce duty free, tariff free access for goods from the Least Developed Countries, following the Everything But Arms initiative of the European Union — but with up to 3% of tariff lines exempted. Other major issues were left for further negotiation to be completed by the end of 2006.

Nations participating 148

Events --

Opening ceremony 13 December 2005

Closing ceremony 18 December 2005

Officially opened by Hong Kong, China

Conference venue HKCEC, Wan Chai, Hong Kong

Number of protesters 10,000

Number of NGOs --

Budget HK$ 250 million

The Sixth Ministerial Conference of the World Trade Organization, also known as the WTO Hong Kong Ministerial Conference and abbreviated as MC6, was held at the Hong Kong Convention and Exhibition Centre, Wan Chai, Hong Kong from 13th to 18 December 2005. Representatives from 148 countries were expected to attend the event, as well as over 10,000 protesters led by the Hong Kong People’s Alliance on WTO and made up of largely South Korean farmers. Wan Chai Sports Ground and Wan Chai Cargo Handling Basin in Wan Chai North have been designated as protest zones. Victoria Park served as the starting point for the rallies. Police wielded sticks, used gas grenades and shot rubber bullets at some of the protesters. They arrested 910 people, 14 were charged, but none were convicted.

Ministerial DeclarationThe Doha Ministerial Declaration mandate for agriculture calls for comprehensive negotiations aimed at substantial improvements in market access; reductions of, with a view to phasing out, all forms of export subsidies; and substantial reductions in trade-distorting domestic support. These topics — domestic support, export subsidies, and market access — have become known as the three pillars of the agricultural negotiations. The Declaration also provides that special and differential treatment for developing countries would be an integral part of all elements of the negotiations. The Declaration took note of non-trade concerns reflected in negotiating proposals of various member countries and confirmed that they would be taken into account in the negotiations. March 31, 2003 was set as the deadline for reaching agreement on “modalities” (targets, formulas, timetables, etc.) for achieving the mandated objectives, but that deadline was missed. During the rest of 2003, negotiations on modalities continued in preparation for the fifth WTO Ministerial Conference held in Cancun, Mexico September 10-14, 2003.

2.8. General Council

The daily work of the ministerial conference is handled by three groups: the General Council, the Dispute Settlement Body, and the Trade Policy Review Body. All three consist of the same membership — representatives of all WTO members — but each meets under different rules and chairpersons. The General Council has several other councils and committees that work underneath the Council.

The General Council, the WTO’s highest-level decision-making body in Geneva, meets regularly to run the WTO. The council has authority to act on behalf of the ministerial conference. The current chairman is Bruce Gosper of Australia. The Dispute Settlement Body is charged with setting trade disputes between members. The current chairperson is Mario Matus of Chile.

The Trade Policy Review Body (TPRB) is tasked with trade policy reviews of Members under the Trade Policy Review Mechanism (TPRM). All members are reviewed periodically. The time in between reviews are subject to the member's total shares of world trade. The largest four, currently the European Communities, the United States, Japan and China, are reviewed every two years. The next 16 are reviewed every four years. All other members are reviewed every six years. In some cases, the least-developed nations are allowed longer periods between reviews.The current chairperson is Yonov Frederick Agah of Nigeria.

Councils for Trade

The Councils for Trade work under the General Council. There are three councils — Council for Trade in Goods, Council for Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights, and Council for Trade in Services — each council works in different fields. Apart from these three councils, six other bodies report to the General Council reporting on issues such as trade and development, environmentalism, regional trading arrangements and administrative issues.

Council for Trade in Goods

The workings of the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) which covers international trade in goods, are the responsibility of the Council for Trade in Goods. It is made up of representatives from all WTO member countries. The current chairperson, as of 2007-02-13, is Yonov Frederick Agah (Nigeria)

There are 11 committees under the jurisdiction of the Goods Council each with a specific task. All members of the WTO participate in the committees. The Textiles Monitoring Body is separate from the other committees but still under the jurisdiction of Goods Council. The body has it's own chairman and only ten members. The body also has several groups relating to textiles.

Council for Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights

Information on intellectual property in the WTO, news and official records of the activities of the TRIPS Council, and details of the WTO’s work with other international organizations in the field.

Council for Trade in Services

The Council for Trade in Services operates under the guidance of the General Council and is responsible for overseeing the functioning of the General Agreement on Trade in Services (GATS). It is open to all WTO members, and can create subsidiary bodies as required.The Service

Council has three subsidiary bodies: financial services, domestic regulations, GATS rules and specific commitments.

Other committees

The General council has several different committees, working groups, and working parties.

Committees on

Trade and Environment Trade and Development (Subcommittee on Least-Developed Countries) Regional Trade Agreements Balance of Payments Restrictions Budget, Finance and Administration

Working parties on

Accession

Working groups on

Trade, debt and finance Trade and technology transfer

Trade Negotiations CommitteeThe World Trade Organization's Trade Negotiations Committee in mid-session discussing the Doha Development Round. 26 July 2008.

The Trade Negotiations Committee (TNC) is the committee that deals with the current trade talks round. The chair is WTO’s director-general. The committee is currently tasked with the Doha Development Round.

Voting system

The WTO operates on a one country, one vote system, but actual votes have never been taken. Decisionmaking is generally by consensus, and relative market size is the primary source of bargaining power. The advantage of consensus decision-making 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.

In reality, WTO negotiations proceed not by consensus of all members, but by a process of informal negotiations between small groups of countries. Such negotiations are often called "Green Room" negotiations (after the colour of the WTO Director-General's Office in Geneva), or "Mini-Ministerials", when they occur in other countries. These processes have been regularly criticized by many of the WTO's developing country members which are often totally excluded from the negotiations.

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.

Dispute settlement

In 1994, the WTO members agreed on the Understanding on Rules and Procedures Governing the Settlement of Disputes (DSU) annexed to the "Final Act" signed in Marrakesh in 1994. Dispute settlement is regarded by the WTO as the central pillar of the multilateral trading system, and as a "unique contribution to the stability of the global economy". WTO members have agreed that, if they believe fellow-members are violating trade rules, they will use the multilateral system of settling disputes instead of taking action unilaterally.

The operation of the WTO dispute settlement process involves the DSB panels, the Appellate Body, the WTO Secretariat, arbitrators, independent experts and several specialized institutions.

The panel processThe various stages a dispute can go through in the WTO. At all stages, countries in dispute are encouraged to consult each other in order to settle “out of court”. At all stages, the WTO director-general is available to offer his good offices, to mediate or to help achieve a conciliation.Note: some specified times are maximums, some are minimums, some binding, some not.

2.9. Accesion and membership

The process of becoming a WTO member is unique to each applicant country, and the terms of accession are dependent upon the country's stage of economic development and current trade regime. The process takes about five years, on average, but it can last more if the country is less than fully committed to the process or if political issues interfere. As is typical of WTO procedures, an offer of accession is only given once consensus is reached among interested parties.

Accession process

Status of WTO negotiations: members (including dual-representation with the European Union) Draft Working Party Report or Factual Summary adopted Goods and/or Services offers submitted Memorandum on Foreign Trade Regime submitted observer, negotiations to start later or no Memorandum on FTR submitted frozen procedures or no negotiations in the last 3 years no official interaction with the WTO

A country wishing to accede to the WTO submits an application to the General Council, and has to describe all aspects of its trade and economic policies that have a bearing on WTO agreements. The application is submitted to the WTO in a memorandum which is examined by a working party open to all interested WTO Members. After all necessary background information has been acquired, the working party focuses on issues of discrepancy between the WTO rules and the applicant's international and domestic trade policies and laws. The working party determines the terms and conditions of entry into the WTO for the applicant nation, and may consider transitional periods to allow countries some leeway in complying with the WTO rules. The final phase of accession involves bilateral negotiations between the applicant nation and other working party members regarding the concessions and commitments on tariff levels and market access for goods and services. The new member's commitments are to apply equally to all WTO members under normal non-discrimination rules, even though they are negotiated bilaterally.

When the bilateral talks conclude, the working party sends to the General Council or Ministerial Conference an accession package, which includes a summary of all the working party meetings, the Protocol of Accession (a draft membership treaty), and lists ("schedules") of the member-to-be's commitments. Once the General Council or Ministerial Conference approves of the terms of accession, the applicant's parliament must ratify the Protocol of Accession before it can become a member.

Members and observers

The WTO has 153 members (almost all of the 123 nations participating in the Uruguay Round signed on at its foundation, and the rest had to get membership). The 27 states of the European Union are represented also as the European Communities. WTO members do not have to be full sovereign nation-members. Instead, they must be a customs territory with full autonomy in the conduct of their external commercial relations. Thus Hong Kong (as "Hong Kong, China" since 1997) became a GATT contracting party, and the Republic of China (Taiwan) acceded to the WTO in 2002 under the full extended name of "Separate Customs Territory of Taiwan, Penghu, Kinmen and Matsu (Chinese Taipei)". A number of non-members have been observers (28) at the WTO and are currently negotiating their membership. With the exception of the Holy See, observers must start accession negotiations within five years of becoming observers. Some international intergovernmental organizations are also granted observer status to WTO bodies. 14 states and 2 territories so far have no official interaction with the WTO.

2.10. Advantages and disadvantages of WTO

The World Trade Organization (WTO) is one of the most recent examples of international trade liberalization. The WTO was convened in January of 1995, a formalization of many changes which had occurred in international markets since the earlier GATT convention. The WTO seeks to lower barriers to international trade and commerce by multilaterally abolishing tariffs, standardizing measures and creating greater dialogue. Its membership has so far reached 148 and over 30 states are negotiating for membership. Like the EU, NAFTA, and various other economic frameworks, membership in the WTO is highly sought after. Money speaks, and free trade is the lingua franca of the global world. The WTO does not discriminate between its members on anything except the political ability to implement free trade. Its legitimacy rests upon the mutual consensus of governments all over the world to legislate for deregulation of the private sector. From this perspective however, the WTO becomes a major force for uniformity and standardization of international interests. The WTO facilitates the flow of goods and services among countries and regions world wide. The WTO attracted attention in 1999 when a Ministerial Conference for world trade in Seattle was faced with anti globalization demonstrations. The WTO was accused of being the main engineer for globalization which has negative impacts on the poor and it represents the interests of developed countries with no consideration for the developing and underdeveloped ones. It shows no consideration to health and environment, besides the accusations that they use the private ownership agreement for the procurement of genetically modified products. The conference failed because of the dispute between its members over free agricultural world trade. Access to WTO requires amendments in the related national laws and legislations to fit international trade conventions, then the technical committees in the organization revise and look at the modified laws, such as customs, trade license and technical barriers committees. Other member countries help in revising, before agreement on the membership. The organization helps its members to develop their human capabilities to carry out basic world trade policies and multi trade systems, in order to acquire the international experience in dealing with World trade agreements and regulation. The organization admits that their eminent agreements don’t cover issues of workers rights, social programs and cultural diversity. Such cases were tabled at the Seattle and Singapore conferences before in 1996. Most of the members opposed them with the pretext that there are other International organizations responsible for them such as International Labor Organization. There is a growing concern over negligence of the Organization to the concerns of developing and under developing countries over the protection of their products and industries that can not compete or stand in the face of h those of the major powers. The organization allows marginal liberty for the governments of these countries to pass the necessary customs laws against inundation of their markets. They are also entitled to take preservative measures, such as imposing extra customs fees on imports to protect their weak or nascent industries. Those countries are supposed to compensate their partners by granting some of their export commodities access to their markets. It is obvious that the countries have got the right to take precautionary steps to protect their human, animal, plant and environmental rights, considering that they don’t contradict the standards set by national and international standard organizations such as (ISO), (WHO) or (FAO). Experts are of the idea that trade liberation has many merits to producers and very little harm to little producers. It is almost of great use to consumers who have will access to varied sorts of little producers. It is almost of great use to consumers who have will access to varied sorts of commodities and services that they can choose from, having wider chances to choose the qualities and advantages they like. Liberation will also accelerate economic development in the long and medium runs, a thing that will lead to social welfare.

Advantages of WTO

World Trade Organization helps member states in various ways and this enables them to reap benefits such as: Helps promote peace within nations: Peace is partly an outcome of two of the most fundamental principle of the trading system; helping trade flow smoothly and providing countries with a constructive and fair outlet for dealing with disputes over trade issues. Peace creates international confidence and cooperation that the WTO creates and reinforces. Disputes are handled constructively: As trade expands in volume, in the numbers of products traded and in the number of countries and company trading, there is a greater chance that disputes will arise. WTO helps resolve these disputes peacefully and constructively. If this could be left to the member states, the dispute may lead to serious conflict, but lot of trade tension is reduced by organizations such as WTO. Rules make life easier for all: WTO system is based on rules rather than power and this makes life easier for all trading nations. WTO reduces some inequalities giving smaller countries more voice, and at the same time freeing the major powers from the complexity of having to negotiate trade agreements with each of the member states. Free trade cuts the cost of living: Protectionism is expensive, it raises prices, and WTO lowers trade barriers through negotiation and applies the principle of non-discrimination. The result is reduced costs of production (because imports used in production are cheaper) and reduced prices of finished goods and services, and ultimately a lower cost of living. It provides more choice of products and qualities: It gives consumer more choice and a broader range of qualities to choose from. Trade raises income: Through WTO trade barriers are lowered and this increases imports and exports thus earning the country foreign exchange thus raising the country's income. Trade stimulates economic growth: With upward trend economic growth, jobs can be created and this can be enhanced by WTO through careful policy making and powers of freer trade. Basic principles make life more efficient: The basic principles make the system economically more efficient and they cut costs. Many benefits of the trading system are as a result of essential principle at the heart of the WTO system and they make life simpler for the enterprises directly involved in international trade and for the producers of goods/services. Such principles include; non-discrimination, transparency, increased certainty about trading conditions etc. together they make trading simpler, cutting company costs and increasing confidence in the future and this in turn means more job opportunities and better goods and services for consumers. Governments are shielded from lobbying: WTO system shields the government from narrow interest. Government is better placed to defend themselves against lobbying from narrow interest groups by focusing on trade-offs that are made in the interests of everyone in the economy. The system encourages good governance: The WTO system encourages good government. The WTO rules discourage a range of unwise policies and the commitment made to liberalize a sector of trade becomes difficult to reverse. These rules reduce opportunities for corruption.

Correct Understanding of Advantages and Disadvantages in Joining WTO

This article focuses on the following three points: I. The Advantages and Disadvantages of Joining the WTO; II. Approaching Advantages and Disadvantages in a Dialectical Way; and III. Meeting Challenges, Promoting Advantages and Eliminating Disadvantages.I. The Advantages and Disadvantages of Joining the WTO

Joining the World Trade Organization (WTO) is the internal requirement for China to deepen reforms, expand opening and establish a socialist market economic structure, it is the need for China's economic development. Joining the WTO in the capacity as a developing country is both advantageous and disadvantageous to China's economic development, but on the whole, advantages outweigh disadvantages.It is conducive to expanding export and attracting foreign capital. After entering the WTO, China will enjoy the most favored nation status as a member country. This will not only enable China to enjoy the advantages offered by other countries and regions opening their markets, and cause the main trading countries to gradually abolish their discriminatory practices, but will also enable China's products to possess more favorable competitive conditions than before, thereby promoting China's export trade, particularly the development of the export of China's industries with comparative superiority. After joining the WTO, China has to fulfill the WTO's specified obligations and gradually open its domestic markets, this will help further improve the foreign investment environment and enhance the appeal of Chinese markets to foreign businessmen, facilitating the introduction of more foreign capital, technology and management expertise.It is conducive to accelerating the readjustment and optimization of the domestic industrial structure. The readjustment and optimization of the industrial structure is an important and pressing task for China's economic development. Joining the WTO will create a favorable international environment for the implementation of this strategic task.. We can transfer some oversupplied products and industries through other WTO members opening their markets to China; by opening its markets to other member countries, China can make use of foreign capital and technology to transform its traditional industries and accelerate the development of high-tech industries and service trades, and raise the overall levels of China's industrial development.It helps continue deepening China's economic restructuring. China's economic structural reform is aimed at establishing a socialist market economic structure, its basic requirement is to give full play to the role of the market competitive mechanism. Joining the WTO will expedite the process of China's reform. At the same time, it will boost the reform of State-owned enterprises (SOEs) and the establishment of a modern enterprise system; it will also push forward the in-depth structural reform of foreign trade, banking, insurance, securities and commercial aspects, so as to meet the need of the gradual opening of these areas.It is conducive to China's participation in the formulation of new rules of international trade, safeguarding China's legitimate rights and interests and elevating China's international status. Joining the WTO to participate in the formulation of bilateral trading rules can give full expression to and reflection of the opinions and demands of China and the numerous other developing countries, give further play to China's role in international economic affairs, and enhance China's international status. In the meantime, China can make use of multilateral dispute solution mechanism; reduce frontal frictions and conflicts with other states, thereby effectively safeguarding China's legitimate rights and interests.It is conducive to China's participation in the world economic globalization process. In this process it can better pursue benefits and avoid harms and protect and expand itself. After its projected entry into the WTO, China and other member states are all required to act strictly in accordance with international rules and open markets to each other. This will help China to comprehensively participate in international competition and international cooperation and give full play to its comparative superiority. At the same time, entry into the WTO also helps China to enter into extensive cooperation with transnational corporations, introduce from them capital, technology and management expertise, make use of their sales channels and networks to expand exports. Entry into the WTO also helps China establish its own transnational companies,

set up enterprises in other counties and enhance the international competitiveness of the Chinese economy.Of course, in joining the WTO, China will both enjoy its due rights and undertake corresponding duties, this will unavoidably bring certain pressure and challenge to us. Firstly, further opening the market will cause some domestic products, enterprises and industries to face more intense competition. After its projected entry into the WTO, China must observe WTO stipulations on opening the market; this will form certain pressure on the speed and steps of our opening the market. Along with the expansion in market access, the reduction of tariffs and the abolition of non-tariff measures, more foreign products, services and investments will possibly enter Chinese markets, domestic enterprises will face fiercer competition. Secondly, China's foreign economic and trade management will, to a certain extent, be subject to the restriction of WTO rules. China's current foreign-related economic laws, regulations and policies still do not completely conform to the stipulations of WTO regulations, although this is also an important task in China's effort to deepen it’s economic and trade management, there still exist many areas of conceptual and institutional inadaptability. There is still a big disparity in the working methods of government offices and managerial personnel. Thirdly, the adjudication on the solution of multilateral disputes may possibly produce results unfavorable to us.

II. Approaching Advantages and Disadvantages in a Dialectical Way

How to look upon the gains and losses of China's projected entry into the WTO? We should approach this question with an all-round, developing and dialectic viewpoint. We should analyze the advantages and disadvantages or gains and losses resulting from China's projected WTO entry from the high plane of the general situation and strategy concerning the cause of reform, opening up, economic development and the modernization drive. We should see both individual industrial units and the whole industry; we should see both present and future things.In analyzing the advantages and disadvantages of China's joining the WTO, we cannot base ourselves on one or several industries, but instead we should keep an eye on the development of the entire economy. Approaching the matter from a single industry, entering the WTO will bring development opportunities for some industries with comparative superiority. Looking upon the matter from the entire industry, accession to the WTO will bring to China's industries greater opportunities than the impact it exerts, most Chinese industries will gain more opportunities for development. Joining the WTO is of positive significance to the near-term economic growth, it is also of far-reaching influence on long-term economic development. From a short-term point of view, entering the WTO can help expand the production and export of China's textiles, electromechanical products with comparative superiority, and attract more foreign capital, particularly transnational corporations, thereby facilitating economic growth and expanding employment. From the long-term point of view, accession to the WTO will produce positive effect on China's economic restructuring, readjustment of the industrial structure, enhancement of international competitiveness and raise of international status We should dialectically approach the gains and losses involved in China's projected entry into the WTO.

III. Meeting Challenges, Promoting Advantages and Removing Disadvantages

Joining the WTO is both an opportunity and challenge to China; we should grasp the opportunity and accept the challenge. We should actively push forward the two fundamental shifts of the economic system and the mode of economic growth, promote the reform in line with a socialist market economic structure, accelerate the readjustment of the industrial structure, give play to comparative superiority, and strive to improve the overall quality of the national economy. This is an important guarantee for enhancing China's overall national strength and international competitive capacity, as well as the fundamental way for China's participation in the effort of the multilateral trading system to promote advantages and remove disadvantages, pursue benefit and avoid harm. We should unify our thinking, take precaution beforehand, work hard and make adequate preparations in various aspects.Enhancing understanding and unifying thinking. Joining the WTO is a major event in the process of China's reform, opening up and modernization drive, it is of far-reaching influence on China's economic development in the new era.Adopting active measures and taking the initiative to meet challenges. In line with the WTO requirement and China's commitments, various professions and trades should study and set forth purposeful and necessary operational measures to meet the pressure and challenge brought by the WTO to China. Firstly, we should provide reasonable protection and support for agriculture. Secondly, we should strive to improve industrial enterprises' international competitive capacity. We should deepen enterprise reform, establish a modern enterprise system and operational mechanism adapting to the requirements of a socialist market economy, so that the enterprise will become a legal entity engaged in independent management and assume responsibility for its profits and losses and the main body of market competition. Thirdly, we should systematically open the service trade market. In light of our promise on joining the WTO, we should selectively and gradually expand opening to the outside world in the fields of telecommunication, banking, securities, insurance and commercial service, actively push forward the reform of the service trade management system, strengthen management, improve service and enhance the competitive capacity of the service trade. Fourthly, we should improve management of cultural products, strengthen legal construction related to cultural products, improve and perfect trade management, expand cultural exchange and cooperation with various countries, actively engage in foreign publicity on China's excellent culture and introduce outstanding foreign cultural products into China.Changing concepts and transforming mechanisms. Many contents of the WTO's rules of conduct and operational mechanisms are new to us, we must change our concepts and transform mechanisms, and only by doing so can we meet WTO's requirements.Intensifying legislation and strictly executing laws. Governing the county according to law is the basic strategy of our Party in leading the people in administering the country. Taking entry into the WTO as an opportunity, we should further strengthen the work of legislation and law enforcement and boost socialist legal construction.

Cultural and economic advantagesA global influenceThe EU is not just Australia's largest trade and investment partner but is the largest economy in the world (as at 2004), with a GDP of $17.3 trillion, nine per cent more than the United States ($15.9 trillion), almost three times that of the next largest economy, Japan ($6.3 trillion), over seven times the size of China ($2.2 trillion) and almost 22 times the size of the Australian economy ($0.8 trillion). It is also the largest international trading bloc in terms of two-way trade, and the world's largest exporter of merchandise goods (exporting $1.6 trillion in 2004, or 18 per cent of global exports), compared to the US (with $1.1 trillion or twelve per cent), China ($806

billion or nine per cent, Japan ($768 billion or nine per cent), and Australia ($118 billion or one per cent). The EU is the world's biggest exporter and importer of services (accounting for 27 per cent of world services exports and 25 per cent of imports in 2003), and the world's second largest importer of merchandise goods (with $1.7 trillion worth of imports in 2004 or 18 per cent of world imports) behind the US (with $2.1 trillion or 22 per cent). Further, the EU is heavily involved in the World Trade Organisation (WTO), the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), the Asia/Europe Meeting (ASEM) and the Energy Charter Conference. Australia's joint involvement in these groups and dialogue with the EU on a world scale has thus provided a link and larger say in the development of global trade and investment policies that are beneficial to Australia.

A strategic allianceA global environment rife with ethnic and international tension has underscored the benefits of drawing on common interests shared by the EU and Australia. The death of millions of Europeans and Australians in two world wars is a reminder that warfare is unthinkable in a European arena for either group. This common front on foreign and security policy has been bolstered by trade, with an increase in exchanges on security and strategic issues, including counter terrorism, and non-proliferation and export control issues. Dialogue has also increased on police cooperation, including exploring the possibility of bilateral cooperation between Australian law enforcement authorities and Europol. Some strategic interests have been tied to migration and asylum issues posed by global population movement. A strategic alliance built on trade incentives has allowed practical cooperation on asylum seeker and refugee readmission to countries of first asylum and border management in third countries. It has allowed further cooperation in combating transnational crime, including people smuggling, and in tackling irregular migration, identity and document fraud with the development of border defence technologies.Regional growth opportunitiesAustralia has used its EU trade links to improve the international trade environment with regard to developing countries in the Asia-Pacific. In 2003, the EU contributed $57 billion worth of international Overseas Development Assistance (ODA) or 54 per cent of total ODA. The two groups have been able to engage in development cooperation programs in areas of mutual interest. The Joint Declaration on Relations between Australia and the European Union (1997) has outlined such areas as the rebuilding of East Timor and the Solomon Islands, and of good governance and economic growth in other countries like Papua New Guinea. The two have been further able to provide support and funding for the Asia-Pacific Leadership Forum on HIV/AIDS and Development. Trade and its facilitation of the funds used in these efforts has benefited regional growth with significant flow-on effects for improved regional security and for employment and training opportunities in aid programs.

European cultureAlmost 90 per cent of Australians claim European ancestry and over 40 per cent of the 4.5 million Australians born overseas were born in the EU. European ties date back to British settlement of Australia in 1788 and to the steady stream of Europeans since then looking for a life in the great southern continent. Immigration following the Second World War has seen Australia and Europe develop broader social and cultural ties reinforced by common democratic values. Since Australia's colonial relationship has weakened and the number of European migrants has declined, an economic partnership remains the mainstay of this relationship. Indeed, former European Commission Vice-President Sir Leon Brittan remarked that 'The

thumping heart of [Europe and Australia's] relationship will remain economic'. A strong economic link may help preserve Australia's historical, social and cultural ties to Europe.

Cultural and economic disadvantagesPossible threats to regional integration and development Some non-government organisations (NGOs), including the Pacific Concerns Resource Centre (PCRC) in Fiji, have criticised the EU for its 'heavy economic and political pressure' to open up markets in developing countries in the Asia-Pacific. Such groups argue that Australian-EU development cooperation is focused more on eliminating trade barriers than on economic development. Concerns are over the threat this poses to the process of regional integration and over unfair European competition in domestic and regional markets, causing food insecurity, social inequality, and losses of public revenue with the elimination of import duties. These issues may impact negatively on Australia's links to this region if such fears are well founded.

2.11. Criticism

Protestors clashing with Hong Kong police in Wan Chai (area of Waterfront) during the WTO Ministerial Conference of 2005.The stated aim of the WTO is to promote free trade and stimulate economic growth. Some people argue that free trade leads to a divergence instead of convergence of income levels within rich and poor countries (the rich get richer and the poor get poorer). [Martin Khor, Director of the Third World Network, argues that the WTO does not manage the global economy impartially, but in its operation has a systematic bias toward rich countries and multinational corporations, harming smaller countries which have less negotiation power. He argues that developing countries have not benefited from the WTO Agreements of the Uruguay Round, because (among other reasons): market access in industry has not improved; these countries have had no gains yet from the phasing out of textiles quotas; non-tariff barriers such as anti-dumping measures have increased; and domestic support and export subsidies for agricultural products in the rich countries remain high. Jagdish Bhagwati asserts however that there is greater tariff protection on manufacturers in the poor countries, which are also overtaking the rich nations in the number of anti-dumping filings.

Other critics claim that the issues of labor relations and environment are steadfastly ignored. Steve Charnovitz, former Director of the Global Environment and Trade Study (GETS), believes that the WTO "should begin to address the link between trade and labor and environmental concerns."Further, labor unions condemn the labor rights record of developing countries, arguing that to the extent the WTO succeeds at promoting globalization, then in equal measure do the environment and labor rights suffer. On the other side, Khor responds that "if environment and labor were to enter the WTO system it would be conceptually difficult to argue why other social and cultural issues should also not enter."Bhagwati is also critical towards "rich-country lobbies seeking on imposing their unrelated agendas on trade agreements." Therefore, both Bhagwati and Arvind Panagariya. Professor at Columbia University, have criticized the introduction of TRIPs into the WTO framework, fearing that such non-trade agendas might overwhelm the organization's function.Other critics have characterized the decision making in the WTO as complicated, ineffective, unrepresentative and non-inclusive, and they have proposed the establishment of a small, informal steering committee (a "consultative board") that can be delegated responsibility for developing consensus on trade issues among the member countries.The Third World Network has called the WTO "the most non-transparent of international organisations", because "the vast majority of developing countries have very little real say in the WTO system"; the Network stresses that "civil society groups and institutions must be given genuine opportunities to express their views and to influence the outcome of policies and decisions." Certain non-governmental organizations, such as the World Federalist Movement, argue that democratic participation in the WTO could be enhanced through the creation of a parliamentary assembly, although other analysts have characterized this proposal as ineffective.

FINDINGS

The WTO scores poorly on almost all fronts, failing to prove a suitable forum for clarifying the relationship between trade and MEA rules due to its lack of environmental expertise and heavy

bias towards trade interests, as well as to the lack of transparency that characterizes its negotiating process.

The WTO facilitates the flow of goods and services among countries and regions world wide. The WTO attracted attention in 1999 when a Ministerial Conference for world trade in Seattle was faced with anti globalization demonstrations.

The WTO was accused of being the main engineer for globalization which has negative impacts on the poor and it represents the interests of developed countries with no consideration for the developing and underdeveloped ones. It shows no consideration to health and environment, besides the accusations that they use the private ownership agreement for the procurement of genetically modified products.

The conference failed because of the dispute between its members over free agricultural world trade. Access to WTO requires amendments in the related national laws and legislations to fit international trade conventions, and then the technical committees in the organization revise and look at the modified laws, such as customs, trade license and technical barriers committees. Other member countries help in revising, before agreement on the membership.

The WTO system encourages good government. The WTO rules discourage a range of unwise policies and the commitment made to liberalize a sector of trade becomes difficult to reverse. These rules reduce opportunities for corruption.

WTO system is based on rules rather than power and this makes life easier for all trading nations. WTO reduces some inequalities giving smaller countries more voice, and at the same time freeing the major powers from the complexity of having to negotiate trade agreements with each of the member states.Some non-government organisations (NGOs), including the Pacific Concerns Resource Centre (PCRC) in Fiji, have criticised the EU for its 'heavy economic and political pressure' to open up markets in developing countries in the Asia-Pacific. Such groups argue that Australian-EU development cooperation is focused more on eliminating trade barriers than on economic development.The WTO facilitates the flow of goods and services among countries and regions world wide. The WTO attracted attention in 1999 when a Ministerial Conference for world trade in Seattle was faced with anti globalization demonstrations. The WTO was accused of being the main engineer for globalization which has negative impacts on the poor and it represents the interests of developed countries with no consideration for the developing and underdeveloped ones. It shows no consideration to health and environment, besides the accusations that they use the private ownership agreement for the procurement of genetically modified products.

RECOMMENDATION The U.S. should re-examine its support for expansion of WTO powers into the

investment realm. The U.S. should argue more ardently the case for Worker Rights group as part of the

WTO, since it is a necessary precondition to a serious discussion of how core international worker rights could be incorporated into the international trading system.

The original proposal for a International Trade Organization, which placed employment issues and corporate behavior on the agenda, should be reconsidered.

Three sets of issues should be high on the U.S. agenda as it approaches the new WTO in the short term:

1. The expansion of WTO Powers: The U.S. should reexamine its support for expansion of WTO powers into the investment realm. Certain governments in the South have justifiably argued for a thorough evaluation of the current WTO before any new powers are considered. Such a review would benefit from participation by farm, labor, environmental, and other organizations that have been affected by the new trade rules.

2. Democracy and Transparency: European nongovernmental groups have taken the lead in arguing for an end to the secrecy which shrouds the operations of the WTO. As a public entity, the WTO should make all documents public immediately. Dispute resolution procedures should be open to public scrutiny. Nongovernmental groups should be recognized as important WTO monitors and contributors to WTO deliberations, and be allowed to observe WTO meetings.

3. Labor Rights and the Environment: The U.S. government has called for the establishment of a WTO Working Party on Worker Rights that will make proposals on the inclusion of labor standards within WTO rules. Yet the U.S. should argue the case for such a group more ardently, since it is a necessary precondition to a serious discussion of how core international worker rights could be incorporated into the WTO.

On the environment, the WTO’s Committee on Trade and the Environment (see In Focus: Trade and the Environment) has been a total failure in addressing environmental concerns; indeed, governments have used it as a platform to undermine more stringent environmental regulations in Northern countries. Friends of the Earth and other environmental groups have advocated abolishing the committee and replacing it with a more effective environmental review process.

As criticism against the WTO rises among citizen groups in North and South and among a number of governments in the South, there is the longer-term challenge of posing an alternative to this institution that would better serve the needs of the majority in the world. Most governments and citizen groups agree that there is a need for a global trading body that has the authority to enforce the trade rules that are agreed upon among nations.

A more just and sustainable trade and investment order would be governed by a body that is more open and transparent, more democratic, is built upon a different set of rules, and is rooted in a different set of principles. The core principles of GATT—”national treatment” and nondiscrimination—work well only when all nations’ level of development is equal.

In today’s unequal world, nations must be given leeway to protect domestic industries and laws. For both the low-income countries of the South and U.S. communities concerned about maintaining and improving social and economic standards, a global trading body should allow governments to subsidize, favor, and protect local industries. Countries should be able to set domestic content levels to encourage local production, a practice now prohibited by the WTO. Communities should be able to protect seeds and homeopathic medicines from the “intellectual property” incursions of large seed and pharmaceutical companies.

Likewise, no global body should be able to challenge any nation’s health, safety, environmental, or other laws as being too stringent; it is up to each nation to determine how high standards

should go. At the same time, no nation should be allowed to gain unfair advantage in international trade through the denial of emerging international worker rights and other standards, and a new global trading body should have the power to enforce this. As the debate emerges over what form a replacement of the WTO should assume, it is useful to put the old blueprints of the International Trade Organization on the table. While the world has changed markedly in four decades, the original architecture which placed employment issues and corporate behavior on the agenda may be applicable to today.

CONCLUSION

The WTO’s creation had much to do with growing dissatisfaction with the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) and the changing priorities of both developed and developing nations. In an attempt to deal with proliferating non-tariff barriers, the GATT had come to incorporate several voluntary codes by the end of the Tokyo Round. But these codes were governed by different rules and dispute settlement mechanisms, and were often inconsistent with each other or with central GATT disciplines. It was recognized that unless a mechanism for coordinating this unwieldy set of agreements was found, the Uruguay Round negotiations would make the system even more unmanageable. As a solution, trade lawyer John Jackson proposed the creation of a world trade organization and the European Union subsequently made the first formal proposal for an organization along such lines. Developing countries were initially suspicious of an organization with powers much more expansive than the GATT’s but they were brought round to the idea with what came to be referred to later as the “Grand Bargain.” In return for agreeing to the inclusion of the new issues – trade-related intellectual property rights, trade-related investment measures (TRIMs) and services – and the establishment of the WTO, developing countries were promised that the WTO’s mandate would include agriculture and textiles, which had traditionally been exempt from GATT rules, and that they would get special and differential treatment through longer term periods for implementing the agreements.In many ways, the WTO can be viewed as an evolutionary step as it continued to embody key principles of non-discrimination and reciprocity inherited from the GATT. Accordingly, WTO agreements continued to be founded on the Most Favored Nation rule and ‘national treatment’ – the idea that a country cannot treat foreign goods any less favorably than its own – to promote non-discrimination. The WTO also adhered to the concept of reciprocity – the notion that contracting parties make reciprocal concessions – a vital principle designed to limit free-riding and to persuade domestic constituencies of the benefits of trade liberalization.

However, there is much about the WTO that is different from the GATT. First, it is a legally constituted organization with a secretariat, rather than a treaty supported by contracting parties. Second, unlike the GATT who’s Protocol of Provisional Application (the so-called ‘Grandfather clause’) meant that countries could choose not to abide by agreements if they were inconsistent with pre-existing domestic legislation, the WTO does not allow members this excuse for not complying with its agreements. Third, the Single Undertaking requires that members accept all WTO agreements as a package, including the dispute settlement arrangements, and prevents them from cherry-picking only those which suit them. The fourth area of difference is that the WTO’s mandate goes into areas well beyond border measures, such as services, TRIMs and intellectual property. Finally, the WTO has a significantly stronger Dispute Settlement Mechanism (DSM). Given the weighty issues it deals with, the size of its membership and the fact that it was set up as a result of a compromise between powerful interests, it is perhaps no surprise that the WTO has had a difficult first decade. However, in addition to facing institutional difficulties, the WTO has also attracted widespread public criticism, particularly in relation to its approach to the developing world.For an organization set up to provide a rules-based and predictable regime for world trade, the WTO relies to a very great extent on informal decision making and improvisation. Clearly, informal processes are crucial to successful negotiating outcomes. But many of its members, particularly those from the developing world, and some NGOs have complained that this informality within the organization undermines the predictability and transparency that they seek from a rules-based system. This is a particular concern where WTO rules are created through informal processes, which themselves contrast with the highly legalistic basis on which the WTO operates, for example through the DSM. The WTO’s mandate is another area which has caused friction as the developed world has successfully pressed for WTO jurisdiction in areas where it has comparative advantage, such as intellectual property, but has resisted any meaningful liberalization in agriculture, which is especially important to developing countries. Also, different interests pull the organization in opposing directions – for some constituencies, its agreements are already too intrusive while, for others, its agreements do not go far enough.At the same time as the WTO’s internal problems mounted, it also faced an unprecedented failure of confidence as developing country governments, pressure groups and members of the public protested in the streets of Seattle. Similar demonstrations have accompanied major meetings of the organization. Not all these protests were based on a full understanding of what the WTO is or does, nor did they add up to a well-defined, coherent agenda. But they have contributed in a big way to the consolidation of the WTO’s public image as the protector of the strong at the expense of the weak. So at last we can say that World Trade Organization helps member states in various ways and this enables them to reap benefits.

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Appendix

Internet

Location of the WTO headquarters in Geneva

Costs of World Bank Projects Related to the Implementation of Three WTO Agreements

Area of Implementation Country Nature of work Cost ($m)

Customs Valuation 10 Eastern European countries

7 yr. Institutional reform – customs modernization

108

Tunisia Customs reform component of a 5 yr. WB export development project

16

Tanzania 3 yr. reform of customs procedures 8-10Lebanon Customs reform component of a 7

yr. WB fiscal management program4

Armenia 4 yr. WB project involving drafting new laws, training staff, computerizing procedures

2

Sanitary and Phytosanitary standards (all WB projects)

Russia 3 yr. SPS implementation – disease control and improvement of food processing facilities

150

Algeria 2 yr. locust control project 112Brazil 7 yr. livestock disease control

project108

Argentina 5 yr. general agric. export reform project

83

Poland 5 yr. SPS component of agric. exports development project

71

Hungary 6 yr. Slaughter-house modernization project

41

Intellectual Property Rights (all WB projects)

Mexico 4 yr. project establishing agency to implement industrial property laws

32.1

Indonesia 6 yr. project to improve IPR regulatory framework

15

Brazil 5 yr. project to train staff administering IPR laws

4