Founding of the World Trade Organization

Date

1 January 1995

Category

Economy & trade

Region

Global

Era

Contemporary

Significance

The World Trade Organization came into being on 1 January 1995, established by the Marrakesh Agreement signed in April 1994 at the conclusion of the Uruguay Round, the eighth and most ambitious round of multilateral trade negotiations conducted under the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade.

Replacing the provisional GATT arrangements that had governed world trade since 1948, the WTO became a permanent institution with a far broader mandate, extending rules beyond goods to services and intellectual property and providing a binding dispute-settlement system to enforce trade commitments among member states. Its creation marked a high point of post-Cold-War economic globalisation, lowering tariffs and embedding liberal trade rules as a framework for an increasingly integrated world economy. Membership expanded to encompass most of the world's nations, with China's accession in 2001 a landmark moment. The organisation also became a focus of intense controversy, drawing large anti-globalisation protests, most visibly at its 1999 Seattle ministerial conference, over its effects on labour, the environment and developing economies.

Empires active in 1 January 1995

• British Empire
  1583 CE – 1997 CE
• Portuguese Empire
  1415 CE – 1999 CE

Related economy & trade events

• The global financial crisis and the collapse of Lehman Brothers
  15 September 2008
• Xi Jinping launches the Belt and Road Initiative
  7 September 2013
• The US-China trade war begins
  6 July 2018
• Nixon shock ends gold convertibility and ushers in 1970s stagflation
  15 August 1971
• The global inflation surge
  2021–2023 (peak June 2022)
• China's Reform and Opening-Up Begins Under Deng Xiaoping
  December 18, 1978

Further reading

The Silk Roads: A New History of the World

The wider story

The Silk Roads: A New History of the World

Peter Frankopan

Best-selling world history told through the trade routes that moved goods, faiths and ideas.

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