linguistic:paraphrasing, quality:correction
Finance and trade law

In 1944, the Bretton Woods Conference established the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development (later the World Bank) and the IMF. At the conference, the International Trade Organization was proposed but failed to be instituted due to the refusal of the United States to ratify its charter. Three years later, Part IV of the statute was adopted to create the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade, which operated between 1948 and 1994, when the WTO was established. The OPEC, which banded together to control global oil supply and prices, caused the previous reliance on fixed currency exchange rates to be dropped in favour of floating exchange rates in 1971. During this recession, British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher and US President Ronald Reagan pushed for free trade and deregulation under a neo-liberal agenda known as the Washington Consensus.