Although there has been much news and coverage of the World Trade Organization (WTO) over the past decade, few people are truly aware of the function of the organization or its implications scope of its mission. It often seems to be just another of the structureless bureaucracies that handle the details of modern life today. However, the WTO is involved in issues ranging from disputes over steel production in Japan to China's telecommunications system and textile production in African countries, to US problems relating to the integration of US regulations with those of the international. The WTO's mission is to “resolve” such international disputes in a way that takes into account the interests of all parties. Its architects have declared it a triumph and a new dawn for commerce. The signatories of the April 1994 world trade agreement, which concluded seven years of talks in the Uruguay Round, described their achievements in glowing terms. As The Economist noted (6/8/94): “Such immodesty was forgivable. Their agreement extends global rules to areas such as services, agriculture and intellectual property. No less important, governments have promised to create a new institution, more powerful than the GATT it will replace, to oversee the new order” (pp. 16). The founding of the World Trade Organization and the World Trade Organization debateThe World Trade Organization is a relatively new institution. institution. Its first meeting took place in Singapore in December 1996, but served more as a celebration of the organization's founding than as a business meeting. According to Desai (1996), the founders were determined to avoid conflict between developing countries and industrial nations in Singapore and to favor only domestic markets. The third principle of the GATT is “transparency,” which requires that any trade protection be obvious and quantifiable, like a tariff. Finally, in addition to these rules, the WTO has the authority to resolve disputes and issue fines and sanctions. Its jurisdiction has also been expanded beyond oversight of manufacturing policies that affect trade to include service sectors such as banking, insurance, travel and management consulting. The same GATT policies applied to the manufacturing sector are now applied to such service operations. Patents, trademarks and copyrights, the bedrock of national policies that restrict trade in intellectual property, now fall under the jurisdiction of the WTO. Investment-related issues may also be subject to WTO rules when investment restrictions between countries limit the free flows of capital and goods.