World Trade Organization WTO Doha The global trading system

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The General Agreement on Trade in Services (GATS) is the first and only set of multilateral rules governing international trade in services

The World Trade Organization (WTO) is the only global international organization dealing with the rules of trade between nations. At its heart are the WTO agreements, negotiated and signed by the bulk of the world’s trading nations and ratified in their parliaments. The goal is to help producers of goods and services, exporters, and importers conduct their business.

The WTO began life on    1995, but its trading system is half a century older. Since 1948, the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) had provided the rules for the system. (The second WTO ministerial meeting, held in Geneva in  1998, included a celebration of the 50th anniversary of the system.)

The principles. The trading system should be ...
- without discrimination — a country should not discriminate between its trading partners (giving them equally “most-favoured-nation” or MFN status); and it should not discriminate between its own and foreign products, services or nationals (giving them “national treatment”);
- freer — barriers coming down through negotiation;
- predictable — foreign companies, investors and governments should be confident that trade barriers (including tariffs and non-tariff barriers) should not be raised arbitrarily; tariff rates and market-opening commitments are “bound” in the WTO;
- more competitive — discouraging “unfair” practices such as export subsidies and dumping products at below cost to gain market share;
- more beneficial for less developed countries — giving them more time to adjust, greater flexibility, and special privileges.

The General Agreement on Trade in Services (GATS) is the first and only set of multilateral rules governing international trade in services. Negotiated in the Uruguay Round, it was developed in response to the huge growth of the services economy over the past 30 years and the greater potential for trading services brought about by the communications revolution.

Services represent the fastest growing sector of the global economy and account for 60% of global output, 30% of global employment and nearly 20% of global trade. When the idea of bringing rules on services into the multilateral trading system was floated in the early to mid 1980s, a number of countries were sceptical and even opposed. They believed such an agreement could undermine governments’ ability to pursue national policy objectives and constrain their regulatory powers. The agreement that was developed, however, allows a high degree of flexibility, both within the framework of rules and also in terms of the market access commitments.

The WTO’s Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects 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.

The Doha agenda. At the Fourth Ministerial Conference in Doha, Qatar, in  2001 WTO member governments agreed to launch new negotiations. They also agreed to work on other issues, in particular the implementation of the present agreements. The entire package is called the Doha Development Agenda (DDA). The negotiations take place in the Trade Negotiations Committee and its subsidiaries, which are usually, either regular councils and committees meeting in “special sessions”, or specially-created negotiating groups. Other work under the work programme takes place in other WTO councils and committees.

Available in: (Organisation mondiale du commerce OMC) (Organización Mundial del Comercio OMC

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