Word: set
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...high principles behind the WTO are that a global set of agreed principles on trade and related matters will facilitate economic growth and will protect the poor from the power of the rich. These basic points are unexceptionable, except to people who know nothing of history or economic development. Expanded world trade is indeed an engine of development, for rich and poor countries alike. And the rule of law surely beats the rule of the jungle, especially for the weaker countries. The collapse of trade in the Great Depression taught us that lesson in brutal terms...
...activists are incensed that the WTO dispute settlement boards can rule that duly enacted U.S. laws are contrary to the WTO. This they claim is undemocratic on its face. But the critique is foolish: the whole point of international trade agreements is to bind the parties to a set of shared standards (that they have mutually adopted), so that they don't engage in unilateral actions to the detriment of others. The fact that such unilateral actions are democratically enacted within a member country is beside the point...
...countries say that U.S. practices are unfair--particularly those regarding intellectual property rights (which indeed deprive the poorest countries of drugs that are available only at monopoly prices protected by patents), and the use of trade barriers against products produced in low-wage countries (such as anti-dumping rules, set not by the WTO, but by the U.S. itself...
...short, standards are in the eye of the beholder. We have a real and continuing puzzle as to where to draw the line on what individual countries can choose to do, and what they should agree to set according to a single international standard. These issues need further debate, but we should take care not to let narrow interests manipulate or undermine open trade...
According to Steen, the problem is the result of two bottlenecks in the current system set-up. The first results from slow communication between the network and the storage system, and the second is due to uneven distribution of workload...