Trade monitoring

Support for developing countries lies at the heart of the WTO’s activities. Much of the work in this area is coordinated by the Committee on Trade and Development, which commemorated its 100th session in 2016.

L'édition des Statistiques du commerce international de cette année sera la dernière à être publiée sous sa forme actuelle. Depuis près de 20 ans, cette publication a pour but de constituer un recueil de statistiques sur le commerce des marchandises, le commerce des services commerciaux, et, plus récemment, le commerce en valeur ajoutée dans les chaînes de valeur mondiales. À l'occasion du 20ème anniversaire de l'OMC, cette édition retrace l'évolution du commerce au cours des 20 dernières années.

At the origins of the GATT , little attention was given to the trade impact of subsidies. However, contracting parties soon appreciated the need to deal with subsidies in order to secure the value of their agreed tariff concessions. A country can undermine its market access commitments by providing subsidies to import-competing industries. In addition, subsidies given to competing exporters in third countries can divert trade away from a country that had relied on negotiated market access to another market. These concerns led to the development of more stringent disciplines on subsidies than those initially provided for under the GATT (1947). A major step was the negotiation of the plurilateral “Subsidies Code” during the Tokyo Round and, thereafter, of the WTO Agreement on Subsidies and Countervailing Measures (SCM) and the Agreement on Agriculture (AoA).