Vanessa Olmos
MGT 3400-004
Professor Palma
February 20, 2015
The World Trade Organization The World Trade Organization (WTO) is a global organization that was established on January of 1995. Its headquarters are in Geneva Switzerland. The WTO is one of the most influential international organizations that there is at the moment. The World Trade Organization deals with the rules of trade between nations and one of its main goals is to help producers of goods and services, exporters, importers conduct their business. There are 160 countries as of June 26, 2014 that are members of the WTO. One of the main functions of the WTO is to make sure that all the trade agreements and the declarations between its member’s countries are respected and when are told they need to do something they are doing it. The WTO also functions as a forum between its members so its members are able to talk about trade negotiations as well as it also helps them with any dispute resolution between different countries that are members of the WTO.
WTO stands for The World Trade Organization in which like it was mentioned is an international organization where the members of this organization talk about trade negotiations. This organization is also a trade opening as well like it was also mentioned before it is where member governments talk about any disputes they have between other members of the organization in any sort of trade problems. Some of the problems that can be resolved in the WTO are that for some reason a member government is having a problem with another member because of some kind of trading barrier problems, the WTO is a place where the problem can be disputed and talked about to get it resolved. Like any organization or business the WTO cannot function without its secretariat, which is the one that coordinates all of its activities. The secretariat that is in charge of the WTO at this moment is Roberto Azevedo and he has around 640 staff members working under his order. His staff members consist of lawyers, economists, statisticians, and communication experts. The staffs members are there to assist the WTO members so that the negotiation agreements progress smoothly as well as they are there so that the international trade rules are correctly applied and enforced because it is how one country member agreed with another country member. They are there to sanction any member who does not follow the WTO rules.
Some of the things that are done at the WTO are that agreements are created to cover goods, services, and intellectual properties. These types of agreements may consist that individual counties committing to lower the custom tariffs they may have as well as any other type of trade barriers they may have. For example, trade negotiation is one type of agreement that is done at the WTO. In the trade negotiation agreement like it has been mentioned each country may agree to lower their custom tariffs and other trade barriers they may have, as well as to open of keep their service markets open. The trade negotiations can be renegotiated from time to time. Implementation and monitoring is also done in the WTO in which the WTO agreements requires that the governments make their trade policies transparent by notifying the WTO about any laws that will be enforced; as well as other measures that are going to be adopted to make their trading more convenient with other countries. Also in this part of implementation and monitoring of the WTO, the WTO wants to make sure that the agreement are properly implemented by the governments of the members as well as the requirements are also being followed as they were told. WTO members also have to undergo a periodic examination of their trade policies and practices.
The member countries of the WTO consist of 160 members as of the 26 of June 2014 and one-third of those members,