Impact of WTO on Globalization Trade Policy
Introduction
World Trade Organization (WTO), found in 1995 and headquarters is in Geneva, has its clearly main purposes since its beginning that to promote economic and trade development all over the world. Up to the end of 2008, there are more than 135 members in the organization. In particularly, with the expansion of globalization trade, international business is more often than any time in the history. As one of the most crucial carrier of economic globalization, WTO establishes a set of international trade rules focusing on the liberalization, which play a strong role of encouraging and guiding in the process of economic globalization (Pauwelyn, 2005). This essay will mainly discuss WTO’s influence on the rules of globalization trade in combination with the current reform of trade policy. It will explain the topic from the following four aspects in detail: first, the basic rules WTO set up for the international trade, then, rules on e-commerce, the new rising global business, third, the preferential rules made by WTO for developing countries, and at last, it will discuss the impacts of WTO’s regulations on environmental issues when doing global trade.
Basic Rules WTO set up for the Global Trade
WTO's main objective is to provide adequate competitive opportunities for the trade among the members, which needs recognized common rules and principles for members to abide. There are two basic principles, namely the MFN principle (referred to as MFN) and national treatment principle. MFN can ensure that all members enjoy equal opportunities for competition, and national treatment guarantees the products of exporter and importer have equal opportunity to compete.
The relevant WTO provisions require that the members of different countries need to open their markets to the others; when developing foreign trade, there should