World Trade Organization
International trade affects our everyday lives more than we realize. I believe we do not realize this because international trade is mainly beneficial to us and others in ‘our society’, at least for the time being. ... I believe that international trade is important but it needs to be highly regulated and monitored constantly for it to work. ... International trade has been around for many centuries, but in the beginning it was restricted to very high value items; silk, perfumes, spices, and salt. ... The Mediterranean trade was an exception due to the short distances, mainly gentle weather, and the fact that the small ships were very highly developed helped a lot. With the establishment of the European Empires and the technological development of clippers, then steam ships and trains, caused the transportation costs to drop dramatically making it possible to trade lots of other goods as well (Roy, 1985). International trade really blossomed in the late nineteenth century and twentieth century. ... The import duties skyrocketed and international trade ground to a halt. ... By the time the Second World War had finished, the developed countries realized they needed rules to make mass scale international trade work, and to stop or reduce the amount of cheating that was going on. ... It was to set up various international financial and commercial institutions to regulate international trade. One of these was to be the General Agreement on Trade and Tariffs, also known as ‘GATT’. This was definitely a step in the right direction for regulating international trade, but it was restricted to manufactured goods.