Twenty Years of Canadian Tradecraft: Canada at GATT, 1947-1967

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When the 23 original signatories to the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) concluded negotiations on 30 October 1947, they were confident that within a year or two the agreements reached would be subsumed into a new International Trade Organization (ITO). They were wrong, The ITO charter, concluded in 1948 in Havana, never entered into force. Instead, GATT was subsumed into a somewhat different international body, the World Trade Organization (WTO), only in January 1995. No country expected more of GATT than Canada, and no delegation was more enthusiastic about the prospect of a sound basis for international trade co-operation than that of Canada.(f.1) It was fitting that it …