WTO & the trade regime
From GATT 1947 to the WTO's Marrakesh Agreement, its dispute settlement crisis, and the Doha deadlock—the trade regime examiners test.
The architecture: GATT 1947 to Marrakesh 1994
The multilateral trade regime began as the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT), signed 30 October 1947 by 23 contracting parties and provisionally applied from 1 January 1948. GATT was never a formal organisation; the stillborn International Trade Organization (ITO), negotiated in the Havana Charter of 1948, was never ratified by the United States, leaving GATT as a provisional treaty that governed trade for nearly five decades through eight negotiating 'rounds'.
The Uruguay Round (1986–1994), launched at Punta del Este, was the most ambitious. It concluded with the Marrakesh Agreement Establishing the World Trade Organization, signed 15 April 1994, which created the WTO on 1 January 1995 as a permanent body with legal personality. The WTO now has 166 members (Comoros and Timor-Leste acceded in 2024), covering over 98% of world trade.
The covered agreements and core principles
The WTO administers a single undertaking of agreements annexed to Marrakesh: GATT 1994 (goods), the General Agreement on Trade in Services (GATS), the Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS), and the Agreement on Agriculture (AoA). Two non-tariff pillars are the SPS Agreement (sanitary and phytosanitary measures) and the TBT Agreement (technical barriers to trade).
The regime rests on two non-discrimination rules. Most-Favoured-Nation (MFN), GATT Article I, requires that any advantage granted to one member be extended to all. National Treatment, GATT Article III, requires imported goods, once across the border, to be treated no less favourably than domestic goods. Exceptions are codified: Article XXIV permits customs unions and free-trade areas; the Enabling Clause (1979) permits the Generalized System of Preferences for developing countries; and Article XX allows general exceptions for public morals, health and conservation.
Decision-making and the agriculture flashpoint
The WTO decides by consensus (Marrakesh Agreement Article IX), with the Ministerial Conference as the supreme organ meeting at least biennially—MC13 was held in Abu Dhabi in February–March 2024. The Agreement on Agriculture divides support into the Amber Box (trade-distorting, capped by the Aggregate Measurement of Support), the Blue Box (production-limiting), and the Green Box (non-distorting, exempt). The de minimis thresholds—10% of production value for developing countries, 5% for developed—and India's demand for a permanent solution on public stockholding for food security (a Bali 2013 'peace clause' issue) are recurring exam fodder.
