lunes, 26 de julio de 2010

"THE WTO IN THE INTERNATIONAL BUSINESS"

1) CONCEPT:
INTERNATIONAL BUSSINES: "International business is all commercial transactions between two or more countries."*
TRADE: "The action of buying and selling goods and services."**
ORGANISATION: "An organized body of people with a particular purpose, specially a business, society, association."***

2) QUESTION: What is the WTO?
ANSWER: On the website of the WTO, the WTO is defined as: "The World Trade Organization (WTO) is the only global international organization dealing with the rules of trade between nations. At its heart are the WTO agreements, negotiated and signed by the bulk of the world’s trading nations and ratified in their parliaments. The goal is to help producers of goods and services, exporters, and importers conduct their busines" ****

On the website (Our World Is Not for Sale OWINFS) of the global network of organizations, activists and social movements, which are committed with combat trade and investment agreements that promote transnational globalization and benefit the world's most powerful corporations at the expense of the people and the environment, they talk more deeply about the WTO:"The World Trade Organisation was established in 1995. It includes 153 countries and is headquartered in Geneva, Switzerland. The WTO has been used to push an expansive array of policies on trade, investment and deregulation that exacerbate the inequality between the North and the South, and among the rich and poor within countries. The WTO enforces some twenty different trade agreements, including the General Agreement on Trade in Services (GATS), the Agreement on Agriculture (AoA) and Trade-Related Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS). The WTO is inherently undemocratic. Its trade tribunals, working behind closed doors, have ruled against a stunning array of national health and safety, labor, human rights and environmental laws, which have been directly challenged as trade barriers by governments acting on behalf of their corporate clients. National policies and laws found to violate WTO rules must be eliminated or changed or else the violating country faces perpetual trade sanctions that can be in the millions of dollars. Since the WTO's inception in 1995, the vast majority of rulings in trade disputes between member nations have favored powerful industrialized countries. Consequently, many countries, particularly developing countries, feel enormous pressure to weaken their public interest policies whenever a WTO challenge is threatened in order to avoid costly sanctions"*****

As we can see the WTO has a great number of countries adopting the required standards that it imposed, here is a great opportunity for the companies that use Globalization as a mean to obtain the maximun benefits in the countries that are adopting the standards proposed by this organisation.

3) POINT OF VIEW: Nowadays the WTO is very important in all the world and in all International Business in order to get an excellent and reliable fair trade.In a globalizing economy, the WTO agreements determine more and more national trade rules and policies. This organization help countries in the process of handling trade disputes . For business, it is vital to be familiar with the present and future trade rules in their markets. For these reasons I think that the world trade organisation is very, very important for the health of the world's economy, especially in countries with economies in developing, because thanks to this organization these countries have a legal support when it will make international business, have technical assistance and training and have cooperation with other international organizations.

____________________________________________________________________ * Daniels, John D(2004). International Business: Environments and operations.Chapter 1: Globalization and International Business. p7.
*** Oxford Dictionaries.(2010).Organisation.[Online]: http://oxforddictionaries.com/view/entry/m_en_us173880#m_en_us1273880
**** World Trade organization.(2010).What is the WTO?.[Online]: http://www.wto.org/english/thewto_e/whatis_e/whatis_e.htm
***** Our World Is Not for Sale.(2010).What is the WTO?.[Online]:
http://www.ourworldisnotforsale.org/es/node/4

-Image1: Gettyimages.The people's silhouette and the earth .(2010).Available at: http://www.gettyimages.com/detail/102871357/Photodisc
-Image2: Gettyimages.Three businessmen turning the earth around.(2010).Available at:
http://www.gettyimages.com/detail/83479373/Imagezoo