The World Trade Organization (WTO) is an international body whose purpose is to promote free trade by persuading countries to abolish import tariffs and other barriers. As such, it has become closely associated with globalisation.
Business leaders from India and Pakistan say there's new optimism about the efforts their governments are making to improve trade ties. But critics warn that overcoming decades of mistrust may not be that easy. For the first time in 35 years, a Pakistani commerce minister led a business delegation to India last week.
The article is about how India and Pakistan are hoping to trade goods directly instead of continuing to trade through third nations such as Sri Lanka and Dubai, they hope to be able to trust each other to make a good trade agreement that everyone will respect.
This article is about the Botswana Bureau of Standards working on developing a new quality of standard for bottled waters (both domestically produced and foreign imports). This is a form of trade barrier as foreign exporters may have to raise their quality of bottled water to the new standard in order to export.
A story about how the internet is going to be more regulated. This is a stretch but hear me out: net neutrality is what makes everyone equally important on the internet, now there will be more barriers to entry, greater startup and sunk costs for being a pert of the internet.
This article is about a free trade agreement that US and South Korea made. They have finally reached an agreement four years after they had initially agreed on trading. This shows that there are various barriers in free trade. One of the reasons for why the US wanted to trade now was to make more job opportunities in the US.
This article is about protectionist steps that could spark a global trade war have violated that promise, with countries from Russia to the United States to China enacting measures aimed at limiting the flow of imported goods.
This article talks about how protectionist policies in one country can spark retaliatory policies in another, leading to a global trade war and inhibiting free trade.