World Trade Organization

The World Trade Organization is an intergovernmental organization that administers trade agreements, provides a forum for negotiations, and adjudicates disputes among member countries.

GATT: The General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade is a multilateral agreement governing trade in goods and a predecessor to the WTO. The WTO administers GATT’s goods-trade rules, which remain central to its agreements.
Bretton Woods Conference: The 1944 conference that established the framework for postwar international monetary and financial institutions. Its postwar institutional vision also shaped efforts to organize international trade.
General Agreement on Trade in Services: The WTO agreement establishing rules and commitments for international trade in services. It extends multilateral trade disciplines to services such as finance and telecommunications.
World Bank: An international financial institution that provides financing and expertise for development and poverty reduction. It is a major postwar institution, but focuses on development finance rather than trade rules.
Dispute settlement in the WTO: The WTO process through which members challenge alleged violations of trade agreements. It turns agreed rules into formal cases, rulings, and authorized remedies.
International Trade Organization: A proposed postwar body for regulating international trade that never entered into force. Its failure left GATT as the main multilateral trade framework for decades.
Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights: The WTO agreement setting minimum standards for intellectual property protection and enforcement in member countries. It connects trade commitments to patents, copyrights, trademarks, and other rights.
International Monetary Fund: An international organization that promotes monetary cooperation and financial stability and provides balance-of-payments assistance. Its mandate concerns monetary stability, unlike the WTO’s governance of trade agreements.
Most-favoured-nation clause: A trade rule requiring a country to extend specified advantages to all covered trading partners. This nondiscrimination principle underpins many WTO commitments.
Havana Charter: The 1948 agreement establishing the proposed International Trade Organization, which was never ratified into force. Its provisions show the broader trade institution envisaged before the WTO.

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