On January 1, 1995, the World Trade Organization succeeded the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade as the principal international body overseeing global trade rules. It established a more formal legal framework for negotiating tariff reductions, resolving trade disputes, and extending coverage to services and intellectual property. Membership grew over subsequent decades to include most of the world's economies, including former centrally planned states transitioning to market systems.
Relevance to Trade History
The WTO's creation marked the formal institutionalization of the post-Cold War global trading system, setting rules that underpinned decades of expanding cross-border commerce.
Read the full story in our article From GATT to the WTO: Building the Rules of Global Trade.
Source: World Trade Organization. See our Sources & Methodology page for how we select and verify references.