John Kerry'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: Kerry wants to investigate the current trade agreements of the U.S., including the worker's rights abuses in China. His plan also includes increasing resources for trade enforcement and action in the WTO. Kerry also plans to actively pursue America's interests and aggressively file WTO cases where appropriate. Kerry's website link

Quotation: "Once again the Bush administration failed to stand up for American companies and workers at the WTO, and as a result, unfair trade practices are hurting our economy and middle-class families. As president, I will stand with American workers and fight to end the outsourcing of American jobs, enforce our trade agreements to reverse our record trade deficit and put American jobs first. We will have free trade and fair trade, where all countries play by the rules." Kerry website link.

Assessment of the proposal:

Positive: According to the Heritage Foundation, pursuing free trade multilaterally through organizations like the WTO is the ideal. Successful negotiations there applies across most of the world in one stroke, as the 147 members account for 97 percent of the world's trade. Kerry's interest in laborer rights and working conditions is also viewed positively. Link.

Negative: The CATO Institute, a non-profit public policy research foundation, criticize calls for new trade restrictions to preserve American jobs, as John Kerry states in many speeches around the country. They find that "there is no significant difference between jobs lost because of trade and those lost because of technologies or work processes." Link.

Comparison: Bush pursues trade agreements through more bilateral and regional negotiations whereas Kerry proposes using the WTO more, and blames many problems in the economy today on Bush's lack of use of WTO for trade agreements. While bilateral, regional, and multilateral (such as the WTO is) all have positives and negatives, the candidates each have their preference as to their method of choice.

Link to Bush's issue page.