The WTO as an International Organization

Citation

Olesen, F. (2002), "The WTO as an International Organization", Journal of Economic Studies, Vol. 29 No. 1, pp. 90-91. https://doi.org/10.1108/jes.2002.29.1.90.1

Since Adam Smith in his Wealth of Nations discussed the many economic advantages of specialization nationally as well as internationally, efforts to free trade from protectionism have been on the political agenda, at least in principle, though not always in practice, as history tells us. Since 1945, the principle of free world trade has been widely debated in international forums. As a result of this, GATT was established as an important instrument to free international trade from restrictions imposed by national governments. And though not without its trouble, GATT was highly successful in achieving its stated goals.

From the Uruguay Round it became evident that GATT was to be transformed into a much stronger organization and as a consequence the WTO was born. With this development the focus changed from that of liberalization of tariffs, etc. to that of studying the consequences of an ongoing process of globalization, where countries are becoming economically more and more interdependent.

The present book, which includes papers, presented at a conference held at Stanford University in 1996, covers it in a wide variety of aspects. Free from the formalism that characterizes much of modern economics and written in a non‐technical style, its contents will be accessible to most people concerned with the consequences of globalization. Professional economists, politicians and others who are concerned with the present state of affairs will all benefit from reading this book. They will not only get much factual information about what is going on at the international stage, they will at the same time be challenged and inspired to think and to be concerned with the possible troubles that might lie ahead. As K. Kesavapany, Singapore’s ambassador to GATT and later on to the WTO, states in his foreword, this book should be seen as a first step toward closer interactions and interchange between the academic and policy‐making communities concerned with global issues of trade.

The papers presented in the book are organized in three parts. Part I (Chs 1‐6) examines matters concerning the organization’s institutional capacity. Part II – the core of the book – addresses some of the more substantive challenges on which WTO has to focus in the future. These challenges include, as stated by Anne Krueger in her introduction to the book, “policies toward preferential trading arrangements, establishing agreements for trade in services, pressures for environmental and labor standards, and liberalization of agriculture”. The general concern of linkages, with attention to environmental and labor standards issues, is discussed by Frieder Roessler (Ch. 6); and the challenges that these issues create more directly for the WTO is taken up by Kym Anderson (Ch. 7). In Ch. 8, Gary Sampson considers how one should try to get a greater coherence among the three important international organizations – the IMF, the World Bank and the WTO. Aspects concerning how to get effective agreements covering services, imposition of multilateral discipline on administered protection (anti‐dumping and countervailing‐duty rules of the GATT and WTO) and the treatment of some of the potential problems of regionalism (preferential trading arrangements among regional groupings of countries) are addressed by Richard Snape (Ch. 10), Robert Baldwin (Ch. 11 ) and T.N. Srinivasan (Ch. 12). Part III takes up two important questions:

1. 1.

   (1) What role does the WTO have to play with respect to the economies in transition?; and

2. 2.

   (2) What can WTO do to help developing countries in the process of still more intensified globalization?

Finally, the book concludes with a chapter, written by Anne Krueger, suggesting an agenda for the WTO for the future.