The General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade took effect in 1948, beginning its provisional application on January 1 of that year. It established a framework for reducing tariffs and discouraging discriminatory trade practices.
GATT was signed on October 30, 1947, by 23 countries. It was designed as an interim arrangement while governments negotiated a broader International Trade Organization. That organization never came into operation, so GATT became the main multilateral rulebook for world merchandise trade.
The agreement promoted principles such as most-favoured-nation treatment, under which a trade advantage granted to one participating country was generally extended to others. Countries also negotiated tariff concessions in successive rounds, gradually reshaping international commerce.
A common mix-up is choosing 1947 because that was the signing year. Another is confusing GATT with the World Trade Organization. The WTO began on January 1, 1995, replacing the original GATT framework with a broader institution covering goods, services, and intellectual property. GATT’s goods rules were incorporated into the WTO system as GATT 1994.