stee-wood computer table 6. World Trade Organization...

                             World Trade Organization

        The World Trade Organization oversees the drafting and implementation of rules for global trade in goods and services. It started operation in 1995, but is essentially a stronger version of its predecessor, the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade, or GATT. GATT was set up after World War II to prevent a repeat of the ruinous rounds of protectionism in the 1930s that made the Great Depression worse. The World Trade Organization, like the secretariat of the GATT before it, is headquartered in Geneva.

         Successive rounds of global trade talks since the founding of GATT in 1947 have broadened international free trade rules. They initially emphasized lower tariffs in manufacturing, but the Uruguay Round of talks broadened them to set many more rules liberalizing trade in agricultural products, services, investment and government procurement. The Uruguay Round also limited countries' ability to impose anti-dumping duties on imports and made it harder for countries to defy rulings against them by trade dispute panels composed of international experts The Uruguay Round, which also effectively replaced GATT with the W.T.O., concluded with marathon talks in Geneva in December 1993.

          The current round of global trade talks started in Doha, Qatar, in November 2001. Negotiations broke down in July 2008, but efforts are under way to restart them. The W.T.O. has also been trying with limited success to persuade more countries to sign up for its rules requiring free trade in government procurement. China joined the organization in 2001 but has refused to sign the separate pact on procurement, making it hard for other countries to object when China's many state-controlled companies discriminate in their purchases in favor of Chinese suppliers.

In August 2009, the W.T.O. gave the United States a victory in its trade battle with China, ruling that Beijing had violated international rules by limiting imports of books, songs and movies. Keith Bradsher (Aug. 13, 2009)