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The Good the Bad the Wto Essay

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The Good, The Bad, The WTO

On May 19,1948, the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade or GATT was created. This was not an international organization but an inter-governmental treaty. This provided the framework for the conduct of international trade. But this expanded and grew yearly and in April 1994, in the Uruguay Round of Multilateral Trade Negotiations expanded on the GATT and created the World Trade Organization or WTO.

The World Trade Organization was created with a goal and ultimate objective set in mind. Its ultimate goal is to improve the welfare of peoples in the member countries. The objective is to help trade flow smoothly, fairly and predictably. In this paper you will learn what the WTO does, how it does this, …show more content…

Ambassadors or the heads of each country's delegation in Geneva are on this council. Under this council there are three subsidiary councils, the Council for Trade in Goods, the Council for Trade in Services, and the Council for Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights. Almost all decisions in the World Trading Organization are made by consensus. Consensus not meaning unanimity. It signifies that no country physically represented in a meeting of the council is decisively against a major issue. Those who are not present or whom abstain from voting do not count. This is for the majority of votes done in the World Trade Organization, rather than anything not stated to be voted on otherwise. The only thing that unanimity is needed is on amendments relating to general principals such as Most Favored Nation treatment. They also use a three-quarters vote and a two-thirds vote for the issues.

The current Director-General is Mike Moore. He is a Former Prime Minister of New Zealand. He is the head of the Secretariat, and in a way, the guardian of the collective interests of the Member States. The Director-General acts more as a broker then a decision-maker though.

The result of all this is assurance. Producers and consumers know that they have a greater choice of finished products, components, raw materials and services that they use and that foreign markets will remain open to them.

Not everyone is happy with the performance of the

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