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World Trade Organization: Rules
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The World Trade Organisation has ruled against the European Union's import tariffs for bananas, officials said last week, possibly opening the door to millions of dollars in US commercial sanctions. The confidential decision - distributed earlier last week to the parties and confirmed by trade.......
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The ActionAid's report, launched on the first day of the World Economic Forum 2006 at Davos, reveals a worldwide explosion of corporate lobbying, contributing to unfair trade rules that undermine the fight against poverty. The report calls on the EU, US and WTO secretariat to curb corporate influence and stop the profits of multinationals being put above the interests of poor people in the current trade talks. January 2006 (pdf version).
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The WTO is an international organization that deals with the rules of trade between nations. Through its agreements, it seeks to help the producers of goods and services, and exporters and importers do business in the world economy. You have probably read about its deliberations and the opposition which greeted the WTO in places like Seattle, Quebec, Bologna, Doha and, most recently, in the Mexican resort city of Cancun. The opposition to the WTO regards it as heavily biased toward the interests of the "global north" (considered mainly the U.S., Europe and Japan) and decidedly antagonistic to the interests of the "global south" (what was called the Third World in recent years).
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The WTO is the only global international organization dealing with the rules of trade between nations. Its predecessor was GATT (see tariff). The WTO members account for over 97 percent of world trade. The goal is to help producers of goods and services exporters and importers conduct their business.
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Despite this elaborate system for settling disputes, the WTO has come under severe criticism from various U.S. organizations and businesses that feel that the WTO is perpetuating rather than eliminating trade barriers—at the expense of U.S. companies. Most of the criticism centers on three very large U.S. defeats in the late 1990s. On appeal the WTO has allowed Britain, Ireland, and the European Union to reclassify U.S. local area network computer equipment as telecommunication hardware. This decision nearly doubles the duty on this equipment from 3.9 percent to 7.5 percent, making it less competitive in European markets. The WTO ... ruled that U.S. attempts to protect endangered sea turtles from shrimp nets violated world trading rules. The largest loss, in terms of U.S. dollars, was the much publicized U.S. case brought on behalf of Eastman Kodak against Japan.
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Originally, GATT functions were intended to be part of a broader International Trade Organization (ITO), whose charter was negotiated in the mid-1940s. The ITO, which would have been under the aegis of the UN, was to have a broad regulatory mandate, covering trade, employment rules, and business practices. However, largely due to pressure from the business community and concerns about the ITO threatening U.S. sovereignty, the U.S. Senate killed the organization by refusing to ratify it, leaving the more narrowly focused GATT to evolve on its own.
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