The WTO has six key objectives: (1) to set and enforce rules for international trade, (2) to provide a forum for negotiating and monitoring further trade liberalization, (3) to resolve trade disputes, (4) to increase the transparency of decision-making processes, (5) to cooperate with other major international economic ...

Seattle WTO protests of 1999, a series of marches, direct actions, and protests carried out from November 28 through December 3, 1999, that disrupted the World Trade Organization (WTO) Ministerial Conference in Seattle, Washington.

Some were there simply to attend it, and others came to protest various aspects of the organization and its policies. On the protest side, most were peaceful demonstrators who took to the streets to express their concern that increasing global trade would hurt labor unions, the environment, and developing nations.

Why do the skeptics in the globalization debate argue that the world is less globalized today than it has been in the past? economic interdependence was greater in the late nineteenth century than it is today.