Trade Protectionism under the WTO: The Impact on Muslim Countries

Abstract

The very objective of establishing the GATT and the WTO is to liberalise trading regimes in the world. Within seven years of the WTO inception, many new issues were brought in under its jurisdiction compared to the GATT. These active developments created fear and bitterness among many Muslim countries as they felt marginalised, exploited and pressured. While they are still in the process of assessing gains of opening up, they are over-poured by many new complex issues. At the same time, contradiction of what has been preached by the WTO and its practice seems to become more apparent these days. The WTO has been convincing the world, particularly the developing countries, that a liberalised trading system would generate enormous advantages. But, in practice, some of the Agreements signed under this multilateral body contain implicit protectionist elements. The objective of this paper is to explain how these Agreements can turn out to be a protectionist tool, in contrast to their claimed objective to liberalise global trading activities.