The G8 may be the only body capable of controlling or changing the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund – but both existed prior to the formation of the G8. That is not true of the World Trade Organization (WTO).

At the 1981 G7 Summit, a new group called the Trade Ministers Quadrilateral (now simply known as the "Quad") was formed. The Quad consisted of the G7 trade ministers (the sitting President of the European Union has since been added to the group). Their mandate is to formulate policy on trade for discussion at future summits.

The Quad was the driving force behind the formation of the World Trade Organization in 1995. It was the adoption of the Quad recommendations on trade at the 1986 G7 summit in Tokyo that led to the aggressive G7 intervention in the Uruguay GATT negotiations that ultimately created the WTO.

The G7 wanted trade liberalization in services, and in trade related aspects of intellectual property rights (TRIPs) and foreign direct investment (FDI). But most of all, the G7 wanted to find a way to enforce the various trade liberalization agreements.

The General Agreement on Trade and Tariffs (GATT) was a voluntary trade association. It had no power to enforce its rulings on trade. Moreover, most of GATT discussion was actually about direct barriers to trade – that is tariffs and duties.

The World Trade Organization has changed all that. The WTO has defined a broad range of non-tariff barriers to trade which, like the FTA and NAFTA, prohibit government measures, regulations and laws that are considered to be barriers to trade.

The WTO can strike down domestic laws, programs and policies of member nations and it can force them to establish new laws that conform to WTO rules. This authority extends to provinces and municipalities.

This unprecedented power to overturn the laws of democratically elected government in sovereign states has dramatically undermined the political, social and economic power of citizens and workers and vastly expanded those powers for international corporations.

The WTO Disputes Resolution Body consists of panels of corporate and trade lawyers and officials who preside in secret meetings as the final judges in all disputes! All proceedings of these tribunals are conducted in secret and their decisions are final and binding. Decisions can only be overturned by the unanimous agreement of all WTO members including the original complainant. The WTO can force compliance by issuing a series of sanctions and penalties.