The International Trade Organization (ITO) was the proposed name for an international

institution for the regulation of trade. Led by the United States in collaboration with allies, the
effort to form the organization from 1945 to 1948, with the successful passing of the Havana
Charter, eventually failed due to lack of approval by the US Congress. Until the creation of the
World Trade Organization in 1995, It officially commenced operations on 1 January 1995,
pursuant to the 1994 Marrakesh Agreement, replacing the General Agreement on Tariffs and
Trade (GATT), which was established in 1948. The WTO is the world's largest international
economic organization, with 164 member states representing over 96% of global trade and global
GDP.
The idea of an international organization to regulate trade received a major boost from the
perceived economic failures of the interwar years, but it had earlier antecedents. In 1847, the
year after the British anti-protectionist lobby secured the goal of abolishing the Corn Laws, an
international free trade congress met at Brussels; further congresses met at irregular intervals in
the years before the First World War and again thereafter. This, however, was not an
intergovernmental body, but was rather a means for individual free traders to meet to promote
their cause in what was arguably a rather self-congratulatory atmosphere. The idea that free trade
helped promote international peace was of course a familiar trope from the rhetoric of Richard
Cobden. By the 1850s, free trade was being discussed in the same breath as proposals to settle
diplomatic disputes by arbitration, although no one yet suggested that international trade disputes
could be resolved in this way. 

"The Organization of International Trade"