Which 1948 trade organization was planned but never came into force?

The International Trade Organization was the 1948 trade organization that was planned but never came into force.

Negotiators drafted the Havana Charter to create the ITO as a broad institution for international trade, employment and economic cooperation. The charter was signed in Havana, Cuba, in March 1948, but the United States did not ratify it. Without ratification by a major participant, the organization was never established.

Instead, the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade operated provisionally from 1948 as the main framework for reducing tariffs and addressing trade barriers. The WTO eventually replaced the provisional GATT system on 1 January 1995.

The ITO is therefore not an earlier name for the WTO. It was a proposed institution with a wider original mandate, while the WTO was created decades later through the Marrakesh Agreement. The failure of the ITO helps explain why GATT remained a treaty framework rather than a full international organization for so long.