This article will help you to learn about the difference between GATT and WTO.
Difference between GATT and WTO
1. The WTO is more global in its membership than the GAIT. Its prospective membership is already around ISO countries and territories.
2. The WTO is a full-fledged international organisation in its own right while the old GATT was basically, a provisional treaty serviced by an ad hoc secretariat.
3. The WTO has a far wider scope than the old GATT, bringing into the multilateral trading system, for the first time, trade in services, intellectual property, and investment.
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4. The WTO also administers a certified package of agreements to which all members are committed; in contrast, the GATT framework included many side agreements (for example, anti-dumping measures and subsidies) but its membership was limited to a few nations
5. The WTO contains a much improved version of the original GATT rules plus a lot more. The new version, called GATT 1994, classifies and strengthens the original GATT rules for trade in goods.
6. Moreover, the WTO reverses policies of protection in certain ‘sensitive’ areas (e.g., agriculture and textiles) that were more or less tolerated in the old GATT. Under various agreements, export restraints on textiles and clothing will be dismantled, trade in agriculture reformed and grey-areas’ trade measures—so-called voluntary export restraints—phased out.
Under the WTO system individual nations retain their right to determine how much they will make national laws conforming to their international obligations.