As part of the Uruguay Round agreement, GATT Contracting Parties agreed to create a new, permanent umbrella organization to replace GATT: the World Trade Organization. The WTO will facilitate the implementation and administration of the Uruguay Round accord. Like the GATT, it will provide a forum for multilateral trade negotiations; conduct reviews of member country trade policies; and cooperate with the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund in an attempt to achieve greater coherence in global economic policymaking. However, the WTO departs from the GATT model in several ways that will narrow the scope for unilateral action. First, the range of trade issues that the WTO will address has been significantly expanded. Second, the WTO has a much stronger dispute settlement procedure. Third, it provides a permanence that GATT (which was planned as a temporary structure) did not supply. Finally, countries will no longer be able to sign individual codes of conduct in various areas, as was the case in the Tokyo Round accord (1979). Instead, nations that join the WTO must agree to accept automatically all the Uruguay Round accords without exception. Like the GATT, the WTO will have a secretariat headed by a director-general. It will meet in ministerial session at least once every two years. Between these sessions, the WTO will have a General Council composed of representatives of all WTO members that will generally meet once monthly. The General Council will oversee the running of the dispute settlement body and the trade policy review mechanism, under which the trade policies of individual WTO members will be examined periodically. Under the General Council will be several subsidiary bodies, including a Council on Trade in Goods, a Council on Trade-Related Intellectual Property Rights, and a Council for Trade in Services.
See also: Codes of Conduct, Multilateral Trade Negotiations and Uruguay Round,

This definition is in context to Customs. See more contextual defintions for World Trade Organization (Wto).