World Trade Organization (WTO)

Presenters:
Sayed Shahid Jilani
 Contents

• BASICS
– What is World Trade Organization?
– Principles of the trading system
– The case for open trade
• THE AGREEMENTS
– Overview: a navigational guide
– Tariffs: more bindings and closer to zero
– Agriculture: fairer markets for farmers
– Standards and safety
–investment
Services: rules for growth and
 Contents. . .

– Intellectual property: protection and enforcement

– etc
Anti-dumping, subsidies, safeguards: contingencies,

– Trade policy reviews: ensuring transparency

• SETTLING DISPUTES
– How disputes are resolved?
A unique contribution
–

• CROSS-CUTTING AND NEW ISSUES

– The environment: a specific concern
Regionalism: friends or rivals?
– Investment, competition, procurement, simpler
– procedures
– Labour standards: highly controversial
 Contents. . .

• DEVELOPING COUNTRIES
– Committees
Overview
–
– WTO technical cooperation
– Some issues raised

• THEWhose
ORGANIZATION
– Membership,
WTO is anyway?
– alliances and bureaucracy
– The Secretariat
– Special policies

Current WTO members

 BASICS
The WTO was born out of negotiations; everything the WTO does
is the result of negotiations

• WhatIs itisathe World Trade Organization?

bird, is it a plane?
– Above all, it’s a negotiating forum …
– It’s a set of rules …
– transparency
predictability
And it helps to settle disputes …
– Born in 1995, but not so young
–Jan 1st 1995
Trading system half century older
– The largest GATT round at Uruguay gave birth to WTO
–
 BASICS. . .
• Principles of the trading system
– Trade without discrimination
•equally
Most-favored-nation (MFN): treating other people

•equally
National treatment: Treating foreigners and locals

• Freer trade: gradually, through negotiation

• Predictability: through binding and transparency
– Promoting fair competition
– Encouraging development and economic reform

• TheEvery
case for open trade
– & financial resources
country has its human, industrial, natural

– Comparative advantage
– flow
liberal trade policies – that allow the unrestricted
of goods & services – sharpen competition,
motivate innovation and breed success
 THE AGREEMENTS
The WTO is ‘rules-based’;
its rules are negotiated agreements

• Overview: a navigational guide

– intellectual
WTO agreements cover goods, services and
property
– Spell out the principles of liberalization
and the permitted exceptions
– lower
Including individual countries’ commitments to
customs tariffs and other trade barriers, and
to open and keep open services markets
 THE AGREEMENTS. . .
These agreements deal with the following
specific sectors or issues:

“For goods”

• Agriculture
• Health regulations for farm products
(SPS)
• Textiles and clothing
• Product standards (TBT)
• Investment measures
• Anti-dumping measures
• Customs valuation methods
• Preshipment inspection
• Rules of origin
• Import licensing
• Safeguards
 THE AGREEMENTS. . .
“For services”

• Air transport
• Financial services
• Shipping
• Telecommunications etc.

• zero
Tariffs: more bindings and closer to

– countries’
There are 22,500 pages listing individual
commitments on specific categories
of goods and services
– Including commitments to cut and “bind”
their customs duty rates on imports of goods
– In some cases, tariffs are being cut to zero
– There is also a significant increase in the
number of “bound” tariffs – committed duty
rates
 THE AGREEMENTS. . .

•Agriculture: fairer markets for farmers

–
market access — (tariffs only) quotas
converted to tariffs
–programmes,
domestic support — subsidies and other
including those that raise or
guarantee farmgate prices and farmers’ incomes
• Amber Box (for developing countries)
• Green Box ( research, disease control,
infrastructure and food security)
• Blue Box (direct payments to farmers)
export subsidies – Agriculture Agreement
prohibits export subsidies on agricultural products
unless the subsidies are specified in a member’s
lists of commitments
 THE AGREEMENTS. . .

• Standards and safety

–dealing with food safety and
Two specific WTO agreements

animal and plant health and safety,

and with product standards in
general
• Sanitary and Phytosanitary
Measures Agreement or (SPS) –
serves the purpose of food
safety, and animal & plant
health standards
Technical Barriers to Trade
Agreement (TBT) – tries to
ensure that regulations,
standards, testing and
certification procedures do not
create unnecessary obstacles
 THE AGREEMENTS. . .

• Services: rules for growth and

investment
–sector
Services represent the fastest growing
of the global economy and
account for two thirds of global output,
one third of global employment and
nearly 20% of global trade
– General Agreement on Trade in
Services has three elements
• the main text containing general
obligations and disciplines
• rules for specific sectors
• individual countries’ specific
commitments to provide access to their
markets
 THE AGREEMENTS. . .
• Intellectual property: protection
and enforcement
– Aspects
WTO’s Agreement on Trade-Related
of Intellectual Property
Rights (TRIPS), negotiated in the 1986–
94 Uruguay Round, introduced
intellectual property rules into the
multilateral trading system for the first
time
• safeguards:
Anti-dumping, subsidies,
contingencies, etc
– anActions taken against dumping (selling at
unfairly low price)
– duties
Subsidies and special “countervailing”
to offset the subsidies
– temporarily,
Emergency measures to limit imports
designed to “safeguard”
domestic industries
 THE AGREEMENTS. . .

• Trade policy reviews: ensuring

transparency
– fellow-members
Governments have to inform the WTO and
of specific measures, policies
or laws through regular notifications
– WTO conducts regular reviews of individual
countries’ trade policies
– Trade Policy Review Objectives
• To increase the transparency and
understanding of countries’ trade policies
and practices, through regular monitoring
• Improve the quality of public and
intergovernmental debate on the issue
• To enable a multilateral assessment of
the effects of policies on the world trading
system.
 SETTLING DISPUTES

The priority is to settle disputes, not to

pass judgment
 SETLLING DISPUTES

• A unique contribution
– system
the central pillar of the multilateral trading

– the
WTO’s unique contribution to the stability of
global economy
– with
The system is based on clearly-defined rules,
timetables for completing a case
– endorsed
First rulings are made by a panel and
(or rejected) by the WTO’s full
membership

• HowDispute
are disputes settled?
– Settlement Body
– Body establishes panels
– First stage: consultation (up to 60 days)
– panel
Second stage: the panel (up to 45 days for a
to be appointed, plus 6 months
for the panel to conclude)
Thank You