WTO differs from GATT as it is based on different principles and policies of trade relations. GATT is just a set of rules while WTO is an international institution with governing bodies. In contrast to GATT, WTO commitments are full. GATT rules and principles of trade cover only retail trade while WTO regulates services and intellectual property industries. The main difference is that WTO is based on multilateral agreements applied to all members of the institution while GATT involved selective agreements applied to some local economies.
The befit of WTO is that it is undeniable that trade policy leaders have their own bases of support, such as interest groups and the bureaucratic institutions they direct. As they depend on those bases to maintain their current position, policy makers’ interests, priorities, and responsibilities in policymaking are put by their support bases. In fact, the state-oriented approach underlines the importance of the demands of society on trade policy-making.
In contrast to GATT, WTO has a stricter system of trade control and does not permit trade violations. Trade violations involve such impotent issues as labor relations and environmental concerns. These rules and principles can be seen as a response to dissatisfaction with the explanatory power of international trade relations that concentrate on international factors or assume country interests to be external. Such attempts are grouped by WTO into four, based on their characterization of the international and the domestic, and the lines of responsibility they draw between these political issues.
WTO has a set of laws aimed to restrict the activity of those companies which violate accepted rules and norms of international trade. Domestic and international relations each possess different and distinct features and limitations on country action; thus domestic goals are more effectively pursued with international trade strategies.