The establishment of the WTO on 1 January 1995 marked a watershed in the history of the multilateral trade system. Following the demise of the original ITO in 1950, there had been some sporadic attempts to put the GATT on a more formal and permanent footing, but these had all failed. However, with the massive expansion of international trade rules during the Uruguay Round, most countries could see considerable merit in a new proposal to establish a new institutional framework for the trade system. Moreover, in an era where global governance was becoming more important than ever before, many felt that the time had come to put the multilateral trade system on an equal institutional footing with the other Bretton Woods organisations, the IMF and the World Bank.

The agreement to establish the WTO, which finally provided strong roots to the slender reed, was hailed by GATT Director-General Peter Sutherland as ‘the crowning achievement of the Round’. Thus it was somewhat ironic that within only a few years the multilateral trade system should find itself under more stresses and strain than ever before. Indeed, far from strengthening multilateralism, the establishment of the WTO has been associated with a significant and widespread backlash to the global trade system, as was evident at the Seattle ministerial meeting in late 1999. Furthermore, the discord and hostility evident at that meeting extended well beyond the familiar conflicts between national negotiating positions, and spilled out on to the streets in violent protests against the WTO.