ECONOMICS
REPORT - World Trade Organization, Part 2
This is Bob Doughty with the VOA Special English
Economics Report.
This week: part two of our report on the World Trade
Organization. We told about agreements that existed before the W-T-O
was established in nineteen-ninety-five. The General Agreement on Tariffs
and Trade, or GATT, served as the main set of rules for world trade
for more than forty years. Today GATT is still the main rule book for
trade in goods.
Nations agreed to form the W-T-O during the eighth
round of world trade talks, the eighth since World War Two. The talks
opened in nineteen-eighty-six in Uruguay and did not end until nineteen-ninety-four,
in Morocco. The first director general of the W-T-O was Peter Sutherland
of Ireland. Now it is Supachai Panitchpakdi of Thailand.
The W-T-O tried to launch a ninth round in Seattle,
Washington, in nineteen-ninety-nine. Ministers from one-hundred-thirty-five-nations
could not agree on the issues to discuss. And opponents of free trade
rioted in the streets.
The W-T-O launched the ninth round in Doha, Qatar,
in November of two-thousand-one. The Ministerial Conference led to the
Doha Development Agenda, a set of issues to discuss to reduce trade
barriers. Among these are agriculture and services.
As we said, GATT remains an important set of rules.
It is thirty-thousand pages long. But it deals only with import taxes
on goods.
A General Agreement on Trade in Services, or GATS,
took effect in nineteen-ninety-five. Banking, financial services and
telecommunications are some of the areas under this agreement. Many
nations bar foreign companies from competing with their own service
businesses. This agreement aims to reduce these barriers.
There is also an Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects
of Intellectual Property Rights, or TRIPS. This deals with trade and
investment in ideas and research. For example, the holder of a copyright
or patent can prevent others from copying creative works or inventions.
But, in general, copyrights and patents have legal power only in the
country that provided them. So the TRIPS agreement seeks to increase
protection of intellectual property rights.
Current world trade negotiations aim to set rules
in areas including trade and competition policy, and openness in government
purchases.
Our report on the World Trade Organization continues
next week. This VOA Special English Economics Report was written by
Mario Ritter. This is Bob Doughty.
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