The history of the WTO

The history of the WTO

The increasing role of global trade has forced the industrialized countries in the XIX century, at the international level to support a limited co-operation on customs duties. Broke out in 1929 the global economic crisis and attempts to overcome it in some developed countries, through direct protection of the domestic market of high customs duties on foreign imports have shown that the ever-increasing volumes of foreign trade, it must be institutionalized and supranational regulation in the recognized international legal framework.
Economic foundation of the requirements of trade liberalization is the economic theory of comparative advantage, developed at the beginning of the XIX century by David Ricardo.
The idea of ​​an international organization designed to regulate international trade, was made before the end of World War II. Most efforts of the United States and Great Britain in 1944 at the Bretton Woods conference was based International Monetary Fund and International Bank for Reconstruction and Development. The third pillar of the new economic order, together with these organizations suggested the establishment of the International Trade Organization (WTO). For this purpose in 1946 was convened in Havana International Conference on Trade and Employment, which was to develop a substantive framework for international agreements to reduce tariffs, invite interested countries to the charter of the organization, take a coordinating role in the facilitation of foreign trade and reducing Customs relief on the way of goods from country to country. Already in October 1947 was signed the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT), which was originally considered only as part of a comprehensive agreement under the new international trade organization. This agreement is regarded as temporary, take effect January 1, 1948.
The USSR was not invited to participate in the Havana conference, refusing to be a member of the IMF and the IBRD. The Soviet government feared that the great influence that the U.S. had in these organizations, and the beginning of the confrontation between ideological blocs (Cold War) did not allow a proper degree the interests of the USSR within the framework of these organizations.
U.S. Congress, however, suddenly refused to ratify the Charter of the ITO, despite the fact that the United States were the main driving force behind the organization of logistics, and GATT, initially a temporary agreement, continued to operate without any organizational structure, which was to become the logistics.
In subsequent years, the GATT, albeit in a truncated form of the originally conceived, was quite an effective system in which the average customs duty reduced from 40% at the time of signing the agreement in the mid-forties to 4% in the mid-nineties. In order to reduce the direct and hidden customs duties, the so-called non-tariff, import restrictions on products from abroad under the GATT rounds of negotiations were held regularly between the participating countries.
The so-called Uruguay Round negotiations, which lasted from 1986 to 1994, was the most successful. As a result of lengthy negotiations in 1994 in Marrakech signed an agreement establishing the WTO, which came into force on January 1, 1995. The participating countries agreed that within this organization will not only be regulated trade in goods (which was the subject of GATT since 1948), but also due to the increasing role of services in the post-industrial society and its growing share in world trade ( at the beginning of the XXI century - about 20%) accepted the General Agreement on Trade in Services (GATS), regulates this area of ​​foreign trade. Also as part of the Marrakesh Agreement, the Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPs), trade issues governing the rights of intellectual property and is an integral part of the legal foundations of the WTO.
Thus, after almost 50 years after unsuccessful attempts to establish an international organization and the existence of a temporary structure of GATT, which regulates the issues of foreign trade, to January 1, 1995 the WTO has started to work.