No book on export law and practice would be complete without a discussion of the significant role that the World Trade Organisation now has in the regulation of trade by individual countries. This chapter focuses on the relevance of the WTO agreements for Australian exporters of manufactured goods, agricultural products and services. There is a large amount of information on both the WTO website (<www.wto.org>) and on the website of the Australian Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade (<www.dfat.gov.au>).

The year 1995 marked a turning point in international trade regulation. In that year almost 150 countries agreed to become members of a new World Trade Organisation and to accede to the six main agreements that set out their rights and obligations. These agreements impose binding legal obligations on the signatory countries and for that reason considerably extend the influence of international regulatory regimes on the ability of individual countries to regulate trade in whichever way they see fit. The aim of the WTO and its constituent agreements was to signal a new beginning in the efforts to achieve global free trade.

Prior to the WTO agreements, the main form of international regulation of international trade was the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade originating from the Bretton Woods conference in 1944 which finally came into effect in 1947. Despite several rounds of negotiations between countries that expanded and clarified the GATT, it had failed to deal adequately with several significant issues that became prominent during the 1970s and 1980s.