The Law and Policy of the World Trade Organization - Coursework Example

The World Trade Organization was formed with the motive of supervising the environment of world trade in a globalized world. At the inception of the WTO, the main focus of the organization was the promotion of the economic condition of the developing nations and to facilitate trade that would work in favor of the growth of these nations. However, there was very little development that was noticed due to the presence of WTO (Blackhurst, 2000, p. 31). It has been claimed by different experts of various nations that the WTO has been controlled by the selfish interests of the nations that are considered to be powerful in the world forum.  The decision-making process on the regulations and the principles of trade remained in their hands. In most cases, it has been seen that the developing nations have been controlled and manipulated by the large nations especially through investments and modern technology sharing (Bossche, 2008, p. 25). The developing nations are dependent on the rich nations for their prosperity mainly because they export to the developed countries and import the updated know-how of production and other necessary goods and services from the latter. The system of foreign trade has also become complicated with the multinational companies setting up subsidiaries in developing nations. These actions have benefitted the developed countries more than it has helped the developing nations.

Some examples have been provided in this part of the report in order to show how WTO failed to improve the conditions of the poor in the less prosperous countries. According to the report of the Fair-trade Foundation, World Trade Organization paid 47 billion US dollars as a subsidy to the rich country cotton producers. On the other hand, 15 million poor cotton farmers are struggling to lead effective lifestyles across West Africa for the last 10 years due to these subsidies to the rich country (Kachiga, 2008, p.99). This negligence to the poor people of less prosperous countries is forcing these poor cotton farmers to leave their businesses. This particular example proves that the World Trade Organization only thinks about the rich and prosperous countries. In terms of agricultural subsidies, it can be stated that the subsidies provided to the rich world farmers can threaten the livelihood of the farmers of the developing world or the third world countries. However, the members of the World Trade organization failed to agree on these things (Bruges, 2004, p.61). The World Trade Organization also failed to make clear the deliberately vague rules on the concluding trade agreements which can allow the developing or less prosperous countries to be influenced by the rich states. There are no such clear rules to protect the farmers or poor people while negotiating with the European Union as the poor African countries have been forced to abolish tariffs on up to 90 percent of total trade.

WTO has also not been able to minimize the legal costs through improved access of its complex legal system to the poor countries. WTO failed to curb the protectionist measures of the G20 countries. All these led to the hijacking of WTO by the rich countries that worsened the conditions of the poor nations. The theories of comparative advantage could be used to explain the activities of intervention by these global economic forces towards implementation of provisions by the World Trade Organization in order to protect the interests of the developing countries in international trade (Bhandari, 1998, p.122). The advancements in the technological sphere, growth of investment, and production in the rich countries have increased their voting rights in the WTO for which the interests of the poor and less prosperous countries have been jeopardized.