Abstract
‘We are living a transformation which is going to reconstruct population and economy for the coming century. There will be no more national products and technologies, no more national firms, no more national industries, no more national economies. Only individuals, which constitute nations, will be kept within the country's boundaries'. (Reich 1993: 13).
After World War II, countries, in order to maintain peace, decided to organize trade agreements. Free trade became a priority in order to reconstruct countries as well as to prosper. This agreement, GATT (General Agreements on Tariffs and Trade), was created in 1948 in order to reduce trade barriers. Its main objectives were to make exchanges free by lowering custom fees and by restraining quantitative and qualitative restrictions. The GATT also applied a non-discriminative principle which had to impede discrimination between foreign exporters and national producers.
The last round of negotiation, the Uruguay Round (1994), resulted in the creation of the WTO (World Trade Organisation).
Globalization is the process by which the world composed of different countries, cultures, language etc is moving to be more like one country. Globalization refers to the increase of countries' interdependence.
This theory is in accordance with the definition given by Fletcher and Brown (2005: 396). Their definition regarding the globalization of markets explains that the globalization of markets is the convergence of firm structures, products, prices etc in order to attack the world as one market.
What are the forces of globalization and what do they expect? What impact does globalization have on international business and trade?
We will start off with an overview of the pros and cons of globalization. Then, we shall identify the actors of the globalization and how they are influenced by globalization and conversely, how they influence globalization.
