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Well, Vietnam is set to become the 150th member of the WTO and Russia will be joining soon as well. Time I guess to blog a little on the Business English surrounding this important topic.

WTO stands for World Trade Organization. The aim of the WTO is to reduce tariffs and other trade barriers in order to promote trade. It replaced the GATT, the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade, which had roughly the same function. The WTO is located in Geneva, Switzerland.

The world trading system has been slowly developed in trade negotiations between countries that are called ’rounds’. You’ll see a lot in the news about the Doha Round, launched in November 2001, under which international markets are supposed to be opened up to trade even more. Past rounds have focused on industrial goods, but the Doha round has opening up the markets for agricultural products as one of its main issues. As you may have heard, the negotiations have stalled and as of yet, the Doha round has produced more controversy than results. Developed and developing countries are at odds over many issues, but agricultural subsidies are the main issue.

Subsidies are extra payments or lower costs given by governments to producers to assist them. Many countries have subsidies for agricultural goods in order to encourage farmers to grow more. A country has to make enough food to feed its people - and most countries don’t feel as secure about importing food from other countries as they do about importing electrical goods or cars. I know that my country, Canada, gives large subsidies to farmers, and the result is that the farmers produce more and the price of wheat goes down. It’s great for consumers (buyers) like me, but bad for farmers from poor countries whose governments can’t afford to pay them the same subsidies. The issue is obviously more complicated than I’m making out here. I’m only introducing the topic to demonstrate some of the language and invite comments.

There was an interesting article on America’s trade deficit in the news today - here. Apparently, in 2006 the U.S. trade deficit will be 790 billion dollars.

What is a deficit? It means you are short of something or don’t have enough of something. A ‘trade deficit’ simply means a country imports more goods than it exports. The opposite, when a country exports more than it imports, is a ‘trade surplus’. So Americans import a LOT more than they export to other countries.

American news often has stories about the U.S. trade deficit, especially during the periods before elections (as we had recently). These news articles usually focus on why there is a deficit, not necessarily on what the results might be because of a deficit.

Let’s look at some examples of how to use this word:

a huge deficit
a massive deficit
a small deficit

run up a deficit (allow it to grow larger)
cut a deficit
reduce a deficit
tackle a deficit (deal with it, make it smaller and more manageable)
overcome a deficit

the deficit grew
the deficit rose
the deficit widened last month (got larger)
the deficit decreased
the deficit fell
the deficit narrowed
the deficit shrank

As you can see, a lot of times we speak about past or future deficits, so make sure you have the correct verb form.

Though it has nothing to do with Business English (though it is big business in North America), I’d just like to mention that today is Halloween.

Halloween is one of my favorite holidays. There are thousands of websites with information about it: the history of Halloween, photos, etc. Too much to talk about here. If you’re interested, Google it.

Halloween is big business these days in Canada and the U.S.
Companies make big profits off of:

- candy - given out when children go around trick-or-treating
- costumes - for both kids and adults

For more information, follow the links above.

Happy Halloween everyone!