World+Trade+Organization

**WORLD TRADE ORGANIZATION (WTO)**

The WTO is understood as “negotiation forum” and sets rules that regulate international trade. In that forum governments settle disputes and sort out the problems they face with each other. The WTO was created from the Uruguay Round and the negotiations of the Uruguay Round. This organization has to deal with trade rules from nations of global and near global level.

The WTO settles some principle disputes such as how to create agreements and monitoring the type of exchanges on the trading system. First, all people have to be treated equally without prejudices. There cannot be any kind of discrimination with foreigners or locals. Secondly, trade barriers will be lowered by negotiations between the countries and WTO. Thirdly, predictability and transparency is very important. Governments have to make the business environment stable and predictable. Lastly, reciprocity is a necessary part of trading and binds social exchanges between developed and developing countries.

The WTO has members that are divided into 4 levels. The highest authority is the Ministerial Conference which can make decisions on all matters. The second level is the General Council and is divided in three guises (General Council, Dispute Settlement Body and Trade Policy Review Body). Their job is to report to the highest authority concerning things such as procedures and trading policies between members. Next are the councils for each broad area (Goods council, Services council and TRIPS council) who are responsible for the workings of the agreements and deals within their respective area. And lastly, there are the down fundamentalists for administrative support. These are the secretaries for the general director (Pascal Lamy) office.

There are various advantages of WTO. It helps to keep peace by making sure that the trading is fair for all. It allows disputes to be handled constructively. It reduces the cost of living, food, clothes and services, and it raises incomes by lowering trade barriers and cutting costs, which is an ad for incomes and that can be good for employment and avoids damage for corruption and other forms of bad government. It also gives consumers more choices for quality products. But these seem to be an “empty proclamation” when compared to the real aims of the organization.

During discussions and negotiations on the forum, equal treatment becomes unequal when it does not allow enough public participation with small corporations from developing countries. On the other hand, they are being very friendly with larger corporations and developed countries. This makes these rich countries become even richer. Corruption because of the power of larger countries is always a threat to equality for all.

Even when there is free trade on the exchanges, new barriers are created by the developed countries and WTO. Laws for safety and protection of the people and environment are not a fairytales but are difficult to enforce. Those new trade barriers make small developing countries weaker. One example is the TRIP’s agreement that limited developing countries from using some technology. But it presses these small countries to open their markets while developed countries maintain higher protection of agriculture. Because of corruption the smaller, underdeveloped countries are at a disadvantage and will remain poor.

There is a lot of criticism of the WTO because it seems to be more in favor of the interest and objectives of developed countries. This makes all the discussions non-transparent, non-reciprocity and not equal for the vast majority of the underdeveloped countries. These smaller, underdeveloped countries need to have more voice and support in the WTO system.