World Trade Organization
The World Trade Organization (WTO) is an international organization designed by its founders to supervise and liberalize international trade. The organization officially commenced on January 1, 1995 under the Marrakesh Agreement, succeeding the 1947 General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT).
The World Trade Organization deals with regulation of trade between participating countries; it provides a framework for negotiating and formalizing trade agreements, and a dispute resolution process aimed at enforcing participants’ adherence to WTO agreements which are signed by representatives of member governments and ratified by their parliaments.
Among 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 and propagate 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.