ABSTRACT
The World Trade Organization (WTO) has become the organization par excellence for dealing with international trade. The transformation of the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) into the WTO was a natural phenomenon that accompanied profound changes in the international economic scene. The WTO is, without doubt, one of the main globalization instruments. It has contributed to this by lowering the barriers to trade and liberalizing an ever-increasing number of economic sectors, including those of services and intellectual property, that belong to the national domain, and by shaping the economic policies of member countries. The WTO Agreements assist the activities of transnational enterprises, the principal players in globalization, and the Uruguay Round confirmed this liberalization. From the Geneva Round in 1947 to that of the Uruguay Round in 1986-1994, the level of tariffs applied to industrial products has fallen from 40 per cent to 3.8 per cent, and the reduced tariffs that have been consolidated have facilitated the establishment of a transnational economy.
