WORLD TRADE ORGANIZATION

(WTO) international organization designed to supervise and liberalize world trade. The WTO is the successor to the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (q.v.; GATT), which was created in 1947 in the expectation that it would soon be replaced by a specialized agency of the United Nations to be called the International Trade Organization (ITO). The ITO never materialized, however, and GATT proved remarkably successful in liberalizing the world's trade over the next five decades. By the mid-1990s, however, there were calls for a stronger multilateral organization to monitor that trade and resolve disputes. The WTO came into being on Jan. 1, 1995, with 104 countries as its founding members. The WTO is charged with policing member countries' adherence to all prior GATT agreements, including those of the last major GATT trade conference, the Uruguay Round (198694), at whose conclusion GATT had formally gone out of existence. The WTO is also responsible for negotiating and implementing new trade agreements. The WTO is governed by a Ministerial Conference, which meets every two years; a General Council, which implements the conference's policy decisions and is responsible for day-to-day administration; and a director-general, who is appointed by the Ministerial Conference. The WTO's headquarters are in Geneva, Switz.