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This is Bob Doughty with the VOA Special English EconomicsReport.
This week: part two of our report on the World TradeOrganization. We told about agreements that existed before the W-T-Owas established in nineteen-ninety-five. The General Agreement onTariffs and Trade, or GATT, served as the main set of rules forworld trade for more than forty years. Today GATT is still the mainrule book for trade in goods.
Nations agreed to form the W-T-O during the eighth round of worldtrade talks, the eighth since World War Two. The talks opened innineteen-eighty-six in Uruguay and did not end untilnineteen-ninety-four, in Morocco. The first director general of theW-T-O was Peter Sutherland of Ireland. Now it is SupachaiPanitchpakdi of Thailand.
The W-T-O tried to launch a ninth round in Seattle, Washington,in nineteen-ninety-nine. Ministers fromone-hundred-thirty-five-nations could not agree on the issues todiscuss. And opponents of free trade rioted in the streets.
The W-T-O launched the ninth round in Doha, Qatar, in November oftwo-thousand-one. The Ministerial Conference led to the DohaDevelopment Agenda, a set of issues to discuss to reduce tradebarriers. Among these are agriculture and services.
As we said, GATT remains an important set of rules. It isthirty-thousand pages long. But it deals only with import taxes ongoods.
A General Agreement on Trade in Services, or GATS, took effect innineteen-ninety-five. Banking, financial services andtelecommunications are some of the areas under this agreement. Manynations bar foreign companies from competing with their own servicebusinesses. This agreement aims to reduce these barriers.
There is also an Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects ofIntellectual Property Rights, or TRIPS. This deals with trade andinvestment in ideas and research. For example, the holder of acopyright or patent can prevent others from copying creative worksor inventions. But, in general, copyrights and patents have legalpower only in the country that provided them. So the TRIPS agreementseeks to increase protection of intellectual property rights.
Current world trade negotiations aim to set rules in areasincluding trade and competition policy, and openness in governmentpurchases.
Our report on the World Trade Organization continues next week.This VOA Special English Economics Report was written by MarioRitter. This is Bob Doughty.