WTO Questions and Answers
1. What is the WTO?
The World Trade Organization (WTO) is the international body responsible for negotiating and implementing new trade agreements. It aims to progressively liberalise world trade. It is also in charge of policing member countries’ adherence to current WTO rules. Currently, 153 countries are WTO members.
Read more: 1. What is the WTO? »2. What is the Doha Round?
The Doha Round is the latest process of WTO negotiations. Since its launch in 2001 there have been a series of meetings, the last held in Hong Kong in 2005, to discuss the different areas that Doha covers: agriculture, manufacturing, and services.The next ministerial meeting will be held from 30 November to 2 December 2009, but a deal will not be concluded until all areas have been agreed on and there is no fixed deadline for this to happen.
Read more: 2. What is the Doha Round? »3. What's wrong with the Doha negotiations on agriculture?
Despite the promising words accompanying the launch of the Round, the US and the EU have consistently put their own needs above those of developing countries.
Read more: 3. What's wrong with the Doha negotiations on agriculture? »4. What's wrong with the Doha negotiations on industrial goods (known as 'NAMA')?
These discussions are focused on the reduction of barriers to markets for manufactured goods, which include tariffs and so-called ‘non-tariff barriers’.
Read more: 4. What's wrong with the Doha negotiations on industrial goods (known as 'NAMA')? »5. What's wrong with the Doha negotiations on services?
‘Services’ refer to a very wide range of potential activities, from banking, to health provision, to telecommunications, to tourism.Services negotiations in the WTO involve allowing foreign services companies into domestic markets – and minimising regulation upon those companies.
Read more: 5. What's wrong with the Doha negotiations on services? »6. Is the decision making process fair?
The Doha proposals are strongly weighted against developing countries, largely because rich countries are able to call the shots in the negotiations. The WTO negotiating process is deeply flawed and skewed against fair outcomes.Even one of the WTO’s former director-generals, Mike Moore, has said “there is also no denying that some members are more equal than others”.
Read more: 6. Is the decision making process fair? »7. What have developing countries done to increase their clout?
In recent years developing countries have tried to counter the power imbalances in the negotiations by coming together into blocs, to increase their influence.
Read more: 7. What have developing countries done to increase their clout? »8. But isn’t a conclusion to the Doha Round important for resisting protectionism and reviving the global economy?
Since the fall of Lehman Brothers in September 2008, world leaders have regularly issued calls for an urgent conclusion to the Doha Round as a means to resist protectionism and a spur to the world economy. Yet, the arguments for concluding the Round on the basis of current proposals are ill-founded.
The threat of extreme levels of protectionism is being overplayed: the WTO chief Pascal Lamy himself admitted in August 2009 that so-called ‘protectionist pressures’ are only appearing “here and there” and “not in a big way”.
Read more: 8. But isn’t a conclusion to the Doha Round important for resisting protectionism and reviving the global economy? »
