Nine Eleven 9/11
Nine Eleven
There is great debate over whether or not the World Trade Organization (WTO) is a worthy association with many proponents arguing for each side. The WTO may succeed in it’s ultimate goal of creating free trade among nations and equalizing products, but at other, most costly measures to both the United States and worldwide. Even if the WTO does create free trade among member nations, it will be at these greater expenses, and will ultimately only end up being more costly for all in the end.
The WTO follows a set of guidelines known as GATT. They were originally intended to be a set of rules and guidelines for the nations of the WTO to follow. GATT also established a way to break up trade disputes among member nations. The power that the WTO was given to remove trade barriers on imports and exports has now been taken advantage of by international businesses, who instead of just applying it to the textiles and manufactured items that it was intended for, are also adding ‘socially conscious’ legislation (environmental laws, health care, animal rights, etc) to the list as well. When GATT was created, thought was not given to protecting animals or the environment, since those were not issues that many nations were concerned over. GATT was only intended to serve for trade in goods, but the Uruguay Round negotiations (which led to the creation of the WTO) extended that coverage to include less concrete items that a value cannot necessarily be placed on, such as services and intellect.
Unions are opposed to the WTO because of job loss and lower wages. They argue that free trade provides advantage to countries that have no minimum wage, child labor, or industrial safety laws. The unions express the concern that manufacturing corporations may shut down their businesses in the United States, and relocate to a more inexpensive area to produce their goods. In these less developed nations where little to no restrictions are placed on manufacturers, companies can produce and export their goods to the United States at a lower cost than if they were to stay in the US to generate the products. In these other nations companies can get away with employing young children in dangerous positions in plants, while only paying them pennies because there is no minimum wage...