George W. Bush's position on

World Trade Organization: The World Trade Organization (WTO) is a global international organization dealing with the rules of trade between nations. The goal of the WTO is to help producers of goods and services, exporters, and importers conduct their business. Link. How much the U.S. government uses the WTO to lodge complaints against countries is a debated issue, as differing opponents feel the U.S. should go different routes when creating international trade agreements.

Description of position: Bush, while he has not brought as many cases to the WTO as past presidents, advocates negotiating solutions with other countries bilaterally or regionally before taking the cases to the WTO. The administration has been able to resolve seven trade disputes with China in April of this year without resorting to the WTO. Under President Bush, the U.S. was the first country to file a WTO case against China, when negotiations on another subject did not work. "Real Results with China," USTR link. Bush's website link.

Quotation: "And it's important to keep those markets open. It's important to make sure that we're confident about our trade policy, not pessimistic, not willing to fall prey to the false hopes of economic isolationism. Economic isolationism will hurt rural America, and it's not going to happen. We'll be tough when we have to, to make sure we're treated fairly. I filed the first WTO case against China over unfair tax burdens it gives to its semiconductor makers. In other words, when we see inequity, we'll file a complaint, we'll take people to the court. We just want to open the fields. We just want to be treated the exact same way we treat them." October 9, 2004, Bush website link.

Assessment of the proposal:

Positive: According to the Heritage Foundation, a research and educational institute, bilateral trade agreements are a good thing, as they allow for flexibility. They allow the U.S. to pick among prospective trade partners, customizing individual agreements based on the needs and concerns of individual countries. It also allows each agreement to move along at its own speed, rather than being slowed down through another party, such as the WTO. Link.

Negative: The Heritage Foundation also points out the weakness to negotiating bilaterally, which is the fact that it permits countries to exclude entire sectors of the economy, for example agriculture, from agreements. They are also limited in the fact that they extend trade slowly and incrementally, one country at a time, rather than more broad agreements which can be reached through multilateral approaches. Link.

Comparison: Kerry plans to utilize the WTO through multilateral negotiations, rather than Bush's bilateral and regional negotiations as a first step and using the WTO as a last resort. Kerry also adamant about pursuing investigations into other countries' laborer rights and workplace rights violations.

Link to Kerry's issue page.