Describe the role of GATT and the WTO in reducing barriers to trade and investment worldwide, and explain how this reduction has led to the integration and interdependence of national economies

What will be an ideal response?

The Bretton Woods Conference of twenty-three nations in 1947 led to the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) and a series of negotiations that, over time, reduced barriers to international trade and investment. Participating governments recognized that liberalized trade would stimulate industrialization, modernization, and better living standards. The GATT eventually transformed into the World Trade Organization, a multilateral governing body that grew to include 149 member nations. The WTO aims to regulate and ensure fairness and efficiency in global trade and investment. Global cooperation in the post-war era gave birth to other international organizations such as the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank.
Internationally active firms devise multicountry operations through trade, investment, geographic dispersal of company resources, and integration and coordination of value-chain activities. Governments have facilitated this integration by lowering barriers to international trade and investment, harmonizing their monetary and fiscal policies within regional economic integration blocs (also known as trade blocs), and developing supranational institutions-the World Bank, International Monetary Fund, World Trade Organization, and others-that seek further reductions in trade and investment barriers.