This chapter deals with co-operative ambitions to create institutions that would establish international co-operative trade. This implied stimulating trade between the national co-operative wholesales, or more ambitiously, the creation of an international co-operative business organization. Free trade as a trade policy and as an approach to internationalism was a condition for the realization of international co-operative trade. Protectionism was not an option. But the very notion of free trade, and the ways in which co-operators have related to it, has been subject to subtle shifts and changes. In the chapter, we follow the endeavours of co-operators to agree on institutions for co-operative international trade and thereby also their discussion regarding free trade policy. The period covered is the first half of the twentieth century but focus is on the inter-war period.