The chapter describes the attempt to underwrite peace through trade by creating an International Trade Organization (ITO), creating an international contract for rules-based trade under the General Agreement on Tariff and Trade (GATT), and creating the World Trade Organization (WTO).

There is an increasing need for international cooperation with respect to trade – to meet the challenges to human health and food security and to deal with climate change, to provide for the greater well-being of the world’s peoples. For conflict-affected countries, integration into the trading system is a path to attaining and then maintaining peace. To be successful in meeting these challenges, much will depend on the external environment – conditions that enable and others that obstruct collaboration. But there is also an environment internal to the trading system, making its institution, the WTO, more fit for purpose by putting into place the necessary reforms.

The modern history of the World Trading System may be said to start with ministers gathering in Hakone, Japan, to launch the Tokyo Round of Multilateral Trade Negotiations, followed a decade later by the launch of the Uruguay Round Negotiations at Punte del Este, Uruguay. The chapter then traces the journey taken by the WTO, covering twelve WTO Ministerial Conferences from 1996 to 2022.

Chapter 16 contains a description of the main aspects of the negotiating history of Article XIX and the Agreement on Safeguards. It provides a summary of the main issues of contention during the negotiation of Article XIX of the GATT 1947, and how the proposals ended up in the final version of the provision in the GATT 1947. Chapter 16 also describes the process of negotiation leading to the establishment of the Agreement on Safeguards and the evolution of the different drafts up to the conclusion of the Uruguay Round. The chapter ends with a conclusion from the author on the manner in which the establishment of the safeguard regulatory system evolved.

This chapter sets out the history of the GATT and the WTO, with particular attention to the evolution of dispute settlement in the GATT/WTO from the Havana Charter to the Uruguay Round and beyond. The chapter provides an explanation and an overview of the WTO’s Dispute Settlement Settlement Understanding (DSU), and summarizes efforts to reform the process since 1995. The chapter also discusses the assistance available to developing countries in WTO dispute settlement and provides some tips on researching WTO law. Finally, the chapter provides an overview of the current crisis in the WTO Appellate Body.

In this chapter, I trace the negotiating history of the post-war multilateral trading system, from the 1940s to 1995 (i.e. the creation of the WTO), through the lens of poverty narratives. I show how the two main narratives emerged, and how they interacted with each other. I further explain why the narrative that 'won' and achieved dominance for the next several decades was largely unsympathetic to the cause of poverty alleviation, especially when mitigation strategies were discussed in the context of the developing world. I conduct this analysis via three negotiation landmarks, plus a fourth case of decision-making processes. The fifth section of the chapter explores the extent to which the powerlessness of the small and poor extended to other areas of international negotiation as well as other aspects of political and social life.

Agriculture has long been a highly protected sector of trade. In the 1950s, a GATT waiver allowed the USA to protect agricultural producers and markets, setting a precedent for everyone else, and impeding efforts to liberalize agricultural trade. The challenge was compounded by the belief that agriculture was exceptional, by pressure from domestic politics and agricultural lobbies, and by the association of farm life with national identities. This chapter examines trade negotiations affecting agriculture from the Dillon to the Uruguay rounds as well as efforts to curb protectionist practices such as subsidies. Although GATT s leading members – the USA, the EEC, and Japan – all protected agricultural producers, the Common Agricultural Policy of the EEC was the most formidable obstacle to liberalizing agricultural trade. Increasingly, the USA and the EEC clashed over agriculture and some feared their dispute would cause a trade war. In the 1980s, the Cairns Group of Fair-Trading Nations, led by Australia, pushed for fair trade in agriculture. By the end of the Uruguay round, agricultural trade was being liberalized, but the reversal provoked farm protests worldwide. Agriculture challenged GATT s credibility and exposed competing liberalprotectionist imperatives and nationalistinternationalist tensions that revealed GATT s limitations and opportunities, weakness and resilience.