Studies in Economic Nationalism

INTRODUCTION

It has been suggested to me that I include in an Appendix a selection from the fairly large number of articles scattered through many journals, magazines and symposiums, which I have devoted over the past two decades to the problem of economic nationalism, its nature, causes and cures. The idea was tempting and it was dangerous. It is tempting to recover some of one’s past writings now largely inaccessible; but it is dangerous, too, to re-serve old dishes which have possibly long since lost such flavour as they once may have possessed!

With one exception (item 3), these essays are reprinted as originally published. The first is a wartime adaptation of my last pre-war study on “The Economic Foundations of Collective Security”. The second essay, on “Prosperity versus Peace”, principally debating Lord Keynes’ contribution to economic nationalism may seem redundant in view of the long chapter devoted to this subject in the main body of the book (Chapter VI): but the time of the original publication (1947) and the emphasis which differs from that of the main chapter seemed to warrant its inclusion. It bridges the reader over to item 3: “An Economist’s views on International Organization” (written in 1950, published in 1952), a point of view which brought many thunders over my head but has been, I think, entirely vindicated by experience.

The “Havana Charter” for the once-projected International Trade Organization has been for several years in the foreground of my academic and public activities: among the many papers I wrote on that subject, the one reprinted here (item 4) first appeared in the Canadian Banker for May, 1948. Also reprinted is an article published in the September, 1949 issue of Fortune, New York, the start of a happy and continuing association. This latter article (item 5) attempts to diagnose the reasons for which the United States, the original sponsor of an international trade code, found itself face to face with what was, in effect, a “Charter of Economic Nationalism”. Conflicting, as it did, with the basic U.S. philosophy of postwar reconstruction and of peacetime life, it had to be eventually discarted.

The United States is torn to this day between the protectionist inheritance of its past and the internationalist requirements of its future. The battle has been raging for a quarter century or more and is entering into a new phase as this book goes to press. From much that I have written as participant in the Free Trade Crusade, I have selected two items, of 1952 and 1958 respectively. They reflect my firm conviction that only the United States can effectively slay the dragon of economic nationalism, they indicate my reasons why it is essential that the dragon should be slayed, and they briefly formulate the elements of a new American foreign economic policy. The reader will excuse their polemic and “current events” character!