The World Trade Organization (WTO) is an intergovernmental organization that regulates and facilitates international trade. It was officially established on 1 January 1995, pursuant to the Marrakesh Agreement signed on 15 April 1994, which concluded the Uruguay Round of multilateral trade negotiations (1986–1994). The WTO succeeded the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT), which was created in 1948. The problem it solved was replacing the provisional GATT with a permanent institution that had a more robust structure and a stronger dispute settlement system.
The WTO's primary function is to provide a framework for negotiating trade agreements and to resolve trade disputes among its 166 members. Its agreements cover trade in goods, services (under the General Agreement on Trade in Services or GATS), and intellectual property (under the Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights or TRIPS). A core mechanism is the principle of non-discrimination, which includes the Most-Favoured-Nation (MFN) provision, requiring a member to grant the same favorable trade terms to all other members. The Dispute Settlement Body (DSB), governed by the Understanding on Rules and Procedures Governing the Settlement of Disputes (DSU), is the mechanism for resolving conflicts.
The WTO is connected to other major international economic institutions like the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund (IMF), which were also conceived after World War II. The WTO replaced the GATT, which was a multilateral treaty that primarily covered trade in goods and lacked a strong institutional foundation. A significant recent change is the paralysis of the Appellate Body of the DSB since December 2019, due to the United States blocking appointments, which has crippled the final stage of the dispute settlement system. The 14th Ministerial Conference (MC14) in March 2026 failed to reach consensus on major reforms, including the future of the DSB and the e-commerce moratorium.