World Trade Organisation – Geography – UGC NET – Detailed Notes

Introduction

The World Trade Organisation (WTO) is an intergovernmental organization that regulates and supports international trade. Governments use the organization to create, update, and enforce international trade rules.

• The World Trade Organisation (WTO) is the sole international organization that deals with international trade rules.
• The WTO agreements, negotiated and signed by the majority of the world’s trading nations and recognized by their parliaments, are at its heart.
• The World Trade Organisation is headquartered in Geneva, Switzerland.
• The Ministerial Conference, which is made up of all member states and meets twice a year, is the highest decision-making body of the organization.
• The World Trade Organisation (WTO) has 164 countries (160 UN countries, EU, Hong Kong, Macau, and Taiwan).

Evolution of WTO

The World Trade Organisation (WTO) is a multilateral organization that regulates and promotes international trade. The Evolution of WTO into the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT), which was established in 1947 with the anticipation of being replaced by a United Nations (UN) specialized agency known as the International Trade Organisation (ITO).

• The WTO precursor General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT), was established by a multilateral treaty of 23 countries in 1947 after World War II in the wake of other new multilateral institutions dedicated to international economic cooperation—such as the World Bank (founded 1944) and the International Monetary Fund (founded 1944 or 1945).
• A comparable international institution for trade, named the International Trade Organisation, never started as the U.S. and other signatories did not ratify the establishment treaty, and so GATT slowly became a de facto international organization.

GATT Negotiations Before Uruguay

• Seven rounds of negotiations occurred under GATT (1949 to 1979).
• The first real GATT trade rounds, which took place from 1947 through 1960, focused on further lowering tariffs.
• The Kennedy Round, which took place in the mid-1960s, resulted in a GATT anti-dumping accord as well as a development component.
• The Tokyo Round, which took place in the 1970s, was the first major attempt to address non-tariff trade barriers and improve the system, adopting a series of non-tariff barriers agreements that interpreted existing GATT rules in some cases and broke new ground in others.
• As not all GATT members agreed to these plurilateral agreements, they were dubbed “codes” informally.
• Several of these regulations were changed as part of the Uruguay Round, which resulted in multilateral agreements that were adopted by all WTO members.
• Only four remained plurilateral (those on government procurement, bovine meat, civil aircraft, and dairy products), but the bovine meat and dairy agreements were terminated in 1997, leaving only two.
• Despite attempts in the mid-1950s and 1960s to establish some form of institutional mechanism for international trade, the GATT continued to operate as a semi-institutionalized multilateral treaty régime on a provisional basis for almost half a century.

Uruguay Round: 1986–1994

• GATT members recognized, well before the 40th anniversary, that the GATT system was struggling to adapt to a new globalizing world economy.
• The eighth GATT round, known as the Uruguay Round, was launched in September 1986 in Punta del Este, Uruguay, in response to the problems identified in the 1982 Ministerial Declaration (structural deficiencies, spillover effects of certain countries’ policies on world trade that the GATT could not manage, and so on).
• It was the largest trade negotiating mandate ever agreed upon: the talks aimed to expand the trading system into several new areas, including services and intellectual property, as well as reform trade in the sensitive agricultural and textile sectors; all of the original GATT articles were up for review.
• The Marrakesh Agreement is the last act ending the Uruguay Round and officially establishing the WTO framework, which was signed on April 15, 1994, during a ministerial meeting in Marrakesh, Morocco.
• The GATT is still in effect as the World Trade Organisation’s (WTO) umbrella convention for goods trade, having been amended as a result of the Uruguay Round discussions.
• However, GATT 1994 was not the only legally binding agreement contained in the Marrakesh Treaty; a long list of roughly 60 agreements, annexes, judgments, and understandings were accepted.
• The agreements are divided into six sections:
  • Agreement Establishing the WTO.
  • Multilateral Agreements on Trade in Goods.
  • General Agreement on Trade in Services
  • Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights
  • Dispute settlement
  • Governments’ trade policies reviews
• The Uruguay Round was successful in expanding binding commitments by both rich and developing countries, as seen by the percentages of tariffs bonded before and after the 1986–1994 talks, according to the WTO’s principle of “tariff ceiling-binding”

Primary Goal of WTO

The World Commerce Organisation (WTO) is an international organization whose main goal is to open up trade for the benefit of everyone and an obstruction-free trade.

Objectives

• To establish and enforce international trade rules.
• To create a venue for further trade liberalization negotiations and monitoring.
• To settle commercial conflicts.
• To make decision-making processes more transparent.
• To work with other important international economic institutions that are active in global economic management.
• To assist developing countries in taking full advantage of the global trading system.

Structure

The World Trade Organisation (WTO) is an intergovernmental organisation that regulates and supports international trade. Governments use the organisation to create, update, and enforce international trade rules. The structure of WTO is governed by its highest authority, the Ministerial Conference, which is made up of delegates from all WTO members and is obligated to meet at least every two years and has the authority to make decisions on any topics under any multilateral trade agreement.

• The daily work is handled between Ministerial Conferences by three bodies whose membership is the same; the only difference is the terms of reference under which each body is created.
• The General Council
• The Dispute Settlement Body
• The Trade Policy Review Body

• The General Council, whose Chair is David Walker of New Zealand as of 2020, has the following subsidiary bodies that oversee various committees:

Council for Trade in Goods

• The Goods Council oversees 11 committees, each with its own set of responsibilities.
• The committees are made up of all WTO members.
• The Textiles Monitoring Body is different from the other committees, but it is nonetheless subject to the Goods Council’s jurisdiction.
• Only ten members make up the body, which is led by a chairman.

Council for Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights

• The Council on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights is a non-profit organisation that promotes trade-related aspects of intellectual property rights.
• Information about intellectual property at the WTO, including news and official records of the TRIPS Council’s actions, as well as facts on the WTO’s collaboration with other international organisations.

Council for Trade in Services

• The General Council directs the work of the Council for Trade in Services, which is in charge of overseeing the operation of the General Agreement on Trade in Services (GATS).
• It is open to all WTO members and has the authority to establish subsidiary bodies if needed.

Trade Negotiations Committee

• The Trade Negotiations Committee (TNC) is in charge of the current round of trade discussions. The director-general of the World Trade Organization (WTO) is the chairperson. The Doha Development Round was assigned to the committee in June 2012.
• Financial services, domestic regulations, GATS standards, and particular commitments are the three subsidiary bodies of the Service Council.
• There are numerous committees, working groups, and working parties within the council.
• Trade and Environment, Trade and Development (Subcommittee on Least-Developed Countries), Regional Trade Agreements, Balance of Payments Restrictions, and Budget, Finance, and Administration are among the committees.
• As of December 31, 2019, there were 338 women and 285 men working for the WTO on a regular budget.

Accession and Membership

• Each applicant country’s process for joining the WTO is unique, and the terms of membership are determined by the country’s economic development stage and current trading system.
• On average, the procedure takes around five years, although it can take longer if the country isn’t totally committed to it or if political obstacles arise.
• The Kyrgyz Republic had the quickest accession negotiations, whereas Russia had the longest.
• Russia applied to join GATT in 1993, was authorised for membership in December 2011, and became a WTO member on August 22, 2012.
• Kazakhstan had a lengthy admission procedure as well.