The law professor Aaron Afilalo shares that until 1945 international trade was characterized by a state dimension of private economic powers, strongly supported by the expansionist policy of the States from which they came. At that time the number of these states was very small: those where the accumulation of capital in financial capital, as a result of the industrial revolution, had led to a policy of international expansion, namely France, Britain, the United States ... But after 1945, it was necessary to adopt a normative order capable of responding to the challenge of a radical change in international economic relations. The trade regime no longer responded to the demoliberal scheme of state economies that at the international level translated into three basic principles, which, with greater or lesser intensity, were present throughout the past century in the internal provisions of the States and the generality of trade agreements. It is, first of all, the principle of "freedom of commerce", a true reflection of the economic liberalism proclaimed by the French Revolution; secondly, of the principle of "free trade", winner of the protectionism that had characterized the previous period and indispensable for the development of international transactions and, finally of the principle of "equal treatment between foreigner and national" in mercantile matter.