WTO Founded — Globalisation Institutionalised
The World Trade Organisation was established by the Marrakesh Agreement of 15 April 1994, entering into force on 1 January 1995. It replaced the provisional GATT framework that had governed international trade since 1948 with a permanent institution with 76 founding members (by 2023, 166 members accounting for over 98% of world trade). The WTO's core innovations over GATT were: **Binding dispute settlement**: The Dispute Settlement Body (DSB) created an enforceable trade court with binding rulings and automatic adoption — unlike the GATT system where a single objecting member could block panel reports. This made trade law genuinely enforceable for the first time. **Extended coverage**: The Uruguay Round added services (GATS — General Agreement on Trade in Services), intellectual property (TRIPS — Trade-Related Intellectual Property Rights), and agricultural trade to the multilateral framework. TRIPS in particular had major development implications — it required developing countries to adopt Western-style patent protection, affecting access to medicines. **China's accession (2001)**: The most consequential WTO event after founding. China's entry required accepting market-access conditions and WTO rules; it also integrated the world's largest labour force into global supply chains. US manufacturing employment fell by approximately 5 million between 2001 and 2011 — the 'China shock' documented by Autor, Dorn, and Hanson — contributing to the political conditions for Trump's 2016 victory. The WTO's Doha Round (launched 2001) failed to reach agreement on further liberalisation, exposing the limits of consensus-based global trade governance when interests diverged between developed and developing members. US-China trade conflict from 2018, and the Trump administration's blocking of Appellate Body appointments that rendered the dispute settlement system non-functional, marked the WTO's institutional crisis.
- Year: 1995 CE
- Category: Political
