The World Trade Organizaton

A few weeks back I posted a blog about the United Nations. This week my blog post will be about the World Trade Organization. The World Trade Organization "is the only global international organization dealing with the rules of trade between nations. At its heart are the WTO agreements, negotiated and signed by the bulk of the world’s trading nations and ratified in their parliaments. The goal is to help producers of goods and services, exporters, and importers conduct their business."  

UN Can Sanction WTO Ruling is an article that was written about a week ago. This article caught my attention because it includes both the WTO and the UN. According to this article, in a World Trade Organization ruling, the United States was awarded millions of dollars from Antigua and Barbuda following the crippling of its Online Gaming Industry. Antigua and Barbuda has held meetings with the World Trade Organization's Dispute Settlement Body in hopes of support recovering lost revenue as a direct result of US sanctions affecting the local online gaming industry. Last week September during the UN General Assembly, Prime Minister Spencer called on the the United States government. The UN feels that the US and Antigua and Barbuda could quickly resolve this dispute if the US would just work with Antigua and Barbuda and hopefully reach a more decent and suitable settlement.

What throws me off about this whole article is that this is not the first dispute between the United States and Antigua and Barbuda. Prime minister Baldwin Spencer felt that the UN would succeed in handling this dispute because they succeeded before. But instead of learning and conducting business in a different manner, Antigua and Barbuda still engaged in negotiations with the United States.

Another thing I find puzzling is that the during the UN Assembly, Prime minister Spencer was quoted saying, “I call on the United States to work cooperatively with Antigua and Barbuda and other remote gaming jurisdictions to forge an enlightened, reasonable and reasoned way of addressing the regulation and licensing of remote gaming services.”

First of all, Antigua and Barbuda happens to be the only remote gaming jurisdiction that has a dispute with the US.