wto.org). Thirdly, an advantage of the WTO treaty is that it protects individual privacy when it comes to the "processing and dissemination of personal data and the protection of confidentiality of individual records and accounts" (www.wto.org). That issue came up because consumer advocate Ralph Nader was quoted as saying, "Particularly in the area of Internet privacy protections, the WTO is forcing governments to forego sovereign privacy protections deemed to be overly restrictive to international trade" (www.wto.org). The WTO's answer to that the trade deal signed by 123 nations "has had nothing whatever to do with internet privacy" and indeed a safeguard is built into the General Exceptions in Article XIV regarding processing and dissemination of personal data, as mentioned at the top of this paragraph.

The fourth advantage of international trade under the auspices of the WTO is that deals signed cannot force any country to move towards the privatization of any service within either trade partner. This comes up because a report has been circulated by the "Alliance for Democracy" (called "Don't let the WTO get hold of our water") that asserts the "progressive liberalization" under GATT "means moving towards privatization of all services, including public services" (www.wto.org). The Alliance for Democracy goes on to insist that the WTO / GATT agreement subjects local jurisdictions to global rules that will only benefit the transnational corporations involved. This is simply not the case,...

An example is the banana trade dispute between the European Union (EU) and the Latin American banana producers. In February 2009, after ten years of a trade conundrum, the EU has made a new proposal to try and end the dispute; to wit, the EU agreed to lower its taxes on banana imports from Latin American countries "…from 114 euros per ton by 2019 instead of 2016" (www.freshplaza.com). Presently bananas are taxed at 176 euros per ton. The Latin American banana produces rejected the proposal -- pointing out that the WTO / GATT agreement has its limitations. WTO cannot simply step in and arbitrarily set a price that both trade partners can agree on. The WTO is not a court of law, in other words, and has no power to enforce solutions to trading partner problems.
Works Cited

Organics Unlimited. (2009). FreshPlaza: Global Fresh Produce and Banana News / EU

Proposal to end Banana Trade Dispute. Retrieved June 11, 2009, from http://www.freshplaza.com/news_detail.asp?id=38939.

World Trade Organization. (2005). The Uruguay Round / GATS Fact and Fiction.

Retrieved June 13, 2009, from http://www.wto.org.