Joining the World Trade Organization

The World Trade Organization (WTO) started in January 1^st 1995 in Geneva, Switzerland as a successor to the late General Agreement on Trades and Tariffs (GATT) at the Bretton-wood conference. WTO is the only international organization created to address the issues and dealing with the global rules of trade between nations. It has a function to ensure that trade flows between nations as predictably, smoothly and freely as possible.  The WTO regulates the trade of goods (tangible manufactured goods), services (professions, banks, insurances, IT sector) and intellectual property rights (copyrights, trademarks, trade dress, patents). The main difference between GATT and WTO is that intellectual property rights is more of an issue in a more globalized world than the world of 1947 (the year GATT was created) thus the reason why WTO now addresses that area of International Law.

The Admission Process

When a country wants to apply to the WTO, it is usually a long process and if a powerful WTO member like the USA is supporting the application, then it tends to be easier to get into the WTO. The following steps show how a country joins the WTO:

Step 1: A country that wants to join the World Trade Organization must apply to get in. On its application, it must describe its economic and trade policies with respect to all current trade deals that it has with any foreign country and its internal policies. This application is then distributed to all existing members of the World Trade Organization. Currently, there are 153 members of the WTO so all 153 WTO members would get the application. Then a “working group” or a group of WTO members gather together to create a panel to specifically deal with the application.

Step 2:  Usually at this stage, interested WTO member contact the applying nation to conduct bilateral talks on issues of interest. These issues may include tariffs, market access, nondiscrimination or anything that would effect the trade between the member state and the applying nation.

Step 3: The working party examines all the memos, commitments, talks and deals made by the various WTO members to and from the applying nation. If those memos and commitments are in compliance with the WTO rules, the working group then includes those commitments into the trade policies with that nation as an agreement.

Step 4: All the members of the WTO are given a chance to review the entire policy package and afterwards, a vote is called for. If two-thirds of the member states approve of the policy package, then the applying nation is approved to join the WTO. As soon as the vote is over and if the vote is favorable, then the new member signs the documents and the various agreements it made with specific nations that are included in the policy package. Then the new nation must take that package and present it to their domestic lawmaking body (such as the legislature: the parliament or the congress) and the legislature must ratify the policy packages. After the ratification, the applying nation is now a full member of the WTO.