What is the WTO? Is it a tool of the rich and powerful Western countries and Japan? Are corporate lobby groups the big winners while the poor the big losers?
Tanja Hollederer
Essay from the year 2005 in the subject Economics - International Economic Relations, grade: High Distinction, University of New England (Australia), language: English, abstract: Trade is as old as mankind and with mankind it developed and kept growing into ajungle of arrangements, contracts, and trade relations summarised by the catch phraseglobalisation. Everyone agrees that there have to be rules to form a commonfoundation for international trade around the world, so that all countries which use itas ‘an instrument for promoting development’1 will profit from its many benefits.The World Trade Organisation (WTO) is the nations’ solution to the problem ofensuring free and fair trade in the interest of economic development of the world as awhole. Keeping this in mind, one might wonder why since 1999 a movement called antiglobalisationwins more and more followers seeing the WTO as their declaredenemy2. Calls for an abolishment of the system grow louder and louder and thedissatisfaction amongst the more than two thirds of developing member countriesshows in the debacle of Seattle where African ministers simply walked out or thecollapse of trade talks in Cancun. Has the WTO really developed into a mere tool of the rich and powerful Westerncountries and Japan and are corporate lobby groups the big winners, while the poorthe big losers? This question forms the centre of the following explanations, whichshortly outline the original idea behind the WTO, then concentrate on the problemsof implementing this idea, and finally answer the question in a conclusion. Due to thelimitations of this essay it is not possible to cover everything associated with theWTO. The texts indicated as footnotes should be considered for further exploration.1 Nitya Nanda, WTO and Development, It’s all about a mercantilist game. From: http://www.gdnet.org/ 2 See The Guardian/Action Aid, TRADE: An insight into the way the world does business, 8 September 2003; p. 3.
