From GATT to WTO to what?


ISBN 9783640553457
28 Seiten, Taschenbuch/Paperback
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Seminar paper from the year 2008 in the subject Politics - International Politics - Topic: International Organisations, grade: 1,7, University of Potsdam, language: English, abstract: Die Ursprünge und aktuelle Problemstellungen des multilateralen Handelssystems.



The multilateral trade Regime, the World Trade Organization, arrived, as

so often in its past, at a cross road. The Doha Development Agenda is now in its

7th year, once again cancelled and once again tried to be revitalized. How come?

On the one hand a broad consensus exists, saying that free trade is better for

everyone. From farmers and fishermen to bankers and C.E.O.s, everybody from

white to blue-collar is supposed to gain welfare from global free trade. And those

who dont even have collars can get some through trading. Chinas rise in the last

decades is not imaginable without global trade. Almost 1 billion people profit

from that and that is just one country!

But on the other hand there are protectionist measures, bilateral

overreaching treaties, subsidies for bankrupt industries and non-tariff barriers to

trade installed from those countries that benefitted the most of the liberalizations

of the past decades.

Today the small ones, the former colonies, the developing countries try to

pick their piece of the pie and are not willing to let the industrialized countries

break the rules they used to engage years ago. They are not willing to take the

inequality anymore and raise their voices in one of the only forums they have,

where theyre treated on a one to one basis.

This essay will give an overview about the historic development from the

General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade to the World Trade Organization. Their

structures as well as their development will be pointed out. After exploring

libraries full of literature to the topics of GATT and WTO, the remarkable text by

Robert Winham about The evolution of the global trade regime appeared to be

the most comprehensive, intelligible and workable. Therefore it is one of the main

sources of this essay. Last but not least regionalization and preferentialism will be

explained in their different facets, concluding with two contrary empirical

examples for economic and political integration.



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