Wto
Although there are many famous riots and controversies connected to the World Trade Organization (WTO), most American citizens don't know what the WTO actually is or what it does. Because there's so much the average person doesn't understand, we need to look at the background of the WTO before we can discuss any further details; then we will look at possible explanations of why people protest, and finally we'll focus on whether or not any protests were justified.
The World Trade Organization is designed to create the rules involved with trade. These trading rules include all countries, not just the US, and can therefore be a little tricky at times. "The WTO establishes a framework for trade policies, it does not define or specify outcomes" (Bagwell, K. and Staiger, R. W. 2002). As we can see, the rules of trading are simply set as guidelines and cannot guarantee a certain outcome for each individual agreement between countries. There are five main rules that the WTO depends on to operate smoothly on a daily basis and they are as follows: nondiscrimination, reciprocity, enforceable commitments, transparency, and safety valves. First, we will look at nondiscrimination. There are two main concepts to understand when looking at the nondiscrimination rule: Most Favored Nation (MFN) and National Treatment Principle (NTP) (Hoekman, B. 2001). MFN involves one country, usually a larger, more developed country, deciding that it wants to trade with another country, usually a smaller country, and give them certain benefits that other countries might not get because the bigger country doesn't like them as well. For example, if England decided that it wanted to trade with Australia, but didn't want to have as much of a dependency on the US, it could make exporting and importing more beneficial to Australia by overlooking tariffs and taxes it might impose on the US. National Treatment Principle can be best explained in terms of goods being treated equally, regardless of...
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