ITC`s Business Briefing e-newsletter is aimed at the business community. It regularly contains a summary of all news on WTO debates, accessions and disputes, as well as information on the Doha Development Round. The electronic version of the World Trade Net Business Briefing is updated daily. Supporters of the WTO, especially multinational corporations (MULTINATIONALS), believe that the organization is beneficial to the economy, as they see stimulating free trade and reducing trade disputes as beneficial to the global economy. Skeptics believe that the WTO undermines the principles of organic democracy and widens the international wealth gap. They point to the decline of domestic industry and growing foreign influence as negative effects on the global economy. ITC shares the real experience of countries that have recently joined the WTO to take advantage of new business opportunities and overcome challenges. This allows the acceding country to take an informed position in the accession process. The WTO`s Trade Policy Review Mechanism aims to improve transparency, better understand the trade policies of WTO Members and assess its impact. Many members view the reviews as constructive feedback on their policies. All WTO Members must be subject to regular review, with each review containing reports from the Member concerned and the WTO Secretariat.

In addition, the WTO regularly monitors global trade measures. This surveillance of world trade, originally launched in the wake of the 2008 financial crisis, has become a regular task of the WTO, with the aim of highlighting the implementation of trade facilitation and trade-restrictive measures by WTO Members. As we said at the beginning, the relationship between trade and employment is complex and the impact of trade on employment cannot be assessed in a vacuum. Many other factors are associated with sustainable job creation. In some cases, rapid trade opening can be the wrong policy. Without adequate physical, institutional and legal infrastructure, the benefits of more open trading can be lost. However, businesses in the countries itC works with are often not sufficiently equipped to understand the opportunities and challenges arising from the WTO trading system. This is mainly due to the complexity of the system, which sometimes prevents the business community from taking an interest in its rules and becoming familiar with them. ITC helps businesses understand the economic impact of WTO accession.

But when the link between trade and employment is complex, one thing is simple: protectionism does not protect employment or does so at a very high cost, which can harm employment elsewhere in an economy. This is especially true today in our increasingly interconnected global economy. Part of the controversy over the role of trade policy may be related to the debate over empirical evidence of the impact of GATT and WTO membership on international trade. While economic theory suggests a positive impact of accession on trade by reducing trade costs by reducing tariffs and non-tariff barriers to trade and improving transparency and predictability, the empirical evidence is more mixed. Banks, insurance companies, telecommunications companies, tour operators, hotel chains and transport companies wishing to do business abroad benefit from the same principles of more open trade that originally applied only to trade in goods. These principles are contained in the General Agreement on Trade in Services (GATS). WTO members have also made individual commitments under the GATS, indicating which of their services sectors they are willing to open up to foreign competition and to what extent these markets are open. Following rose`s groundbreaking work (2004), in which he found no significant impact of GATT and WTO membership on bilateral trade and on the diversion of trade from non-member countries to Members, several studies have reassessed the impact of GATT and WTO membership by refining the gravity model. Some of these studies suggest that the impact of GATT and WTO accession can only be accurately estimated if the following main aspects are taken into account in the estimate: (1) the need to distinguish asymmetries in commitments between Members (Subramanian and Wei, 2003); (2) the simultaneous existence of other trade agreements (Tomz et al.

2004, Eicher and Henn 2011); and (3) the omission of null and void commercial observations (Helpman et al. 2004). This is part of what economists call “emigration” and what the Austro-American economist Joseph Schumpeter called “creative destruction.” It has been part of economic life for centuries and can cause pain. But history The OECD has mapped the impact of imports on the unemployment rate in 23 countries. While the correlation between import penetration and unemployment suggested a link between the two during the period 1970-90, the last 20 years have been a different story. From 1990 onwards, these lines diverged a lot and today all the link between the two has faded. Accession to the WTO helps companies to market their products internationally under fair and predictable conditions of competition, without the disruption caused by the sudden imposition of restrictions. The implementation of measures to fulfil accession commitments can bring both opportunities and challenges for the economy. Africa is already experiencing major improvements. For example, as part of an investment project in the East African Community, delays at border crossings have been reduced from three days to three hours, allowing goods to be transported much faster between the port of Mombassa and neighbouring countries. It is not surprising that some business leaders have even stated that they consider trade facilitation to be a top priority of the Doha Round. The economy, trade and the WTO have always been closely linked.

The private sector is the main beneficiary of transparent and predictable trade rules and obligations. Without business, there would be no trade and no WTO. Business is an important interlocutor for both governments and the WTO. It actively participates in the multilateral trading system and participates in the public activities of the WTO. The WTO is based on agreements signed by the majority of the world`s trading nations. The main function of the organization is to help producers of goods and services, exporters and importers to protect and manage their businesses. In 2019, the WTO had 164 member countries, with Liberia and Afghanistan being the youngest members to join in July 2016, and 23 “observer countries”. In a recent WTO business survey, more than 80 per cent of companies welcomed the idea of having their own website with information tailored to their interests and needs.

For this reason, this website was created. We hope you find it useful. More recently, Chang et al. (2011) using non-parametric methods on a significant and positive effect of GATT/WTO accession on trade (between 74% and 277% for GATT/WTO countries). Dutt et al. (2013) note that WTO membership increases the significant export margin by 25%, but has a negative impact on the intensive margin. Roy (2011) finds no statistically significant effects of WTO membership once the fixed effects of country time are included in the severity model. As Cheong et al.

(2014) noted, the fragility of GATT and WTO accession estimates in the Standard Gravity Model is mainly due to the multicollinearity between the conditions of multilateral resistance and the variables of WTO accession. Trade and Poverty Reduction: New Evidence on Impacts in Developing Countries (2018) This report presents eight case studies that show how reducing the high costs of doing business faced by small traders can help reduce poverty in developing countries. Thirdly, the estimation specification, which includes both unilateral and bilateral GATT/WTO variables, allows us to draw conclusions on the impact of GATT/WTO accession on trade between Member States and on trade between Member States and on trade between Member States and on trade between Member States and third countries. Estimates of these effects are also large, positive and statistically significant. In particular, we estimate that accession to GATT or the WTO has led, on average, to an increase in international trade between Member States and third countries of around 88%. Within the Council on Trade-Related Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS), WTO members exchange information on their policies to support MSMEs` creativity, inventiveness and investment in research and technology. Members recognized the particular importance of intellectual property rights for small businesses, whose intellectual capital is often their most important asset. MSME-related actions presented in this context include grant schemes, streamlining of application procedures and greater transparency of intellectual property rules. .