ABSTRACT
The International Trade Organization (ITO) had been conceived as a third pillar of the Bretton Woods Agreement, alongside the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank. According to the United States and Great Britain, the two great powers who shaped the world after the Second World War, the principles of multilateralism had to apply to the trade system. They reaffirmed the ties between trade policy and international cooperation on many occasions during the 1942 lending agreements, the 1944 Bretton Woods Conference and the San Francisco Conference, which launched the United Nations. The 1945 American proposals stressed that a trade system must be both multinational and non-discriminatory (Goldstein 1993). Great Britain only partially agreed with to the American arguments. Its preferences were more in the direction of a system that not only took account of tariffs and quotas, but also envisaged full employment. Quantitative restrictions remained at the centre of the American system and the two governments were determined to ban them. In 1945, the United States published some proposals for expanding world trade and employment and circulated them widely. They invited fifteen countries to negotiate the reduction of tariffs and other trade barriers. Fourteen countries, with the notable exception of the Soviet Union, accepted the invitation. An International Trade Organization (ITO) thus was created.
