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World Trade Organization: International Trade
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The WTO is effectively the long-delayed successor to the anticipated International Trade Organization, which was originally intended to follow the GATT. The International Trade Organization charter was agreed at the UN Conference on Trade and Employment in Havana in March 1948, but was blocked by the U.S. Senate (WTO, 2004b). Some historians have argued that that failure may have resulted from fears within the American business community that the ITO could be used to regulate, rather than liberate, big business (Wilkins, 1997).
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A sound international financial system is needed to support vibrant international trade, while smoothly flowing trade helps to reduce the risk of payments imbalances and financial crisis. The two institutions work together to ensure a strong system of international trade and payments that is open to all countries. Such a system is critical for enabling economic growth, raising living standards, and reducing poverty around the globe.
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Perhaps the greatest opportunity for the WTO is the integration of the former Soviet states, the PRC, and the states of Eastern Europe into the framework of open international trade. While such integration will certainly not be easy, it promises to increase international trade, and the economic benefits that it fosters, faster and more permanently than any other single initiative available to the Organization. This becomes obvious when it is realized that "China [sic] is ranked eleventh in the WTO's world merchandise export league and Russia is twentieth" (Barnard, 1).
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The WTO makes the rules that govern international trade. There has been a conspicuous hush on the media treatment of the WTO since Bush became President but those rules have gotten a lot tougher in the meantime. The Economist reported in September of 2003:
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Although the WTO commenced operations in 1995, the international trade regime is much older, and so the story of trade and law enforcement has to begin with the pre-WTO era. In 1927, when governments drafted a comprehensive convention to prohibit trade bans, they recognized the need to provide an exception for “prohibitions or restrictions relating to public security.”(51) This exception was in addition to one for restrictions on traffic in arms, munitions or implements of war.
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Such conservatism should not be allowed to prevail in light of the fact that "Today, financial flows exceed trade flows by vast multiples" (Czinkota, 2). Although these transactions are not given much publicity, they have tremendous influence on international trade.
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International Trade