Institutional Issues

The GATT agreement was the offspring of a much more ambitious attempt in the late 1940s to establish an international trade organisation (ITO) with more substantial powers. This organisation, based on the Havana Charter, was to be the third pillar of the Bretton Woods institutions along with the IMF and the World Bank, but the implementing bill failed to be passed by the United States Senate. The GATT itself was in fact only a treaty or agreement, as its name implies, serviced by a secretariat. It was not a full-blown international organisation in the traditional sense.