1. The World Trade Organization (WTO) grew out of the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT), an international trading system that emerged after World War II. Started in 1947, GATT continued through 1995 when the World Trade Organization became its successor. The intervening half century was marked by repeated rounds of negotiations in which the various members of the GATT developed the rules and regulations that they would seek to enforce among members, and the environment which they believed would facilitate greater freedom of movement of goods and services across international borders (Ganser 7).
The WTO's primary strength is in its trade resolution mechanism. Each member country has one representative to the WTO, similar to the United Nations, and all representatives participate in negotiating trade rules. The trade resolution mechanism offers a way for nations who believe that they are being unfairly treated in the world market to seek remedy for that treatment. However, critics of the WTO point out that the dispute process requires that governments must justify restrictions to the WTO which, under its rules, is required to give preference to free trade over restrictions (Frank 30).
2. The WTO has had a considerable amount of criticism leveled at it. There are those who maintain that the overall benefits generated by the WTO outweigh any such criticism, however. These proponents of the WTO maintain that free access to markets on a global level benefit the most individuals throughout the world by making goods and services available at the lowest prices.
Critics of the WTO charge that the organization is biased in favor of heavily industrialized and heavily capitalized nations·primarily the United States and Western Europe, who continue to exert considerable influence on which countries can join the WTO and how its rules and regulations are developed and enforced. These critics also charge that the WTO's p...