Free-Trade Politics and Diplomacy: John F. Kennedy and Textiles

Abstract

For more than two decades now political debates in the United States over foreign and domestic economic policies have revolved around strategies to deal with the consequences of America's successful postwar reconstruction policies. By the late 1950s Western Europe had moved well beyond recovery and, together with Japan, had been integrated into the open, multilateral world economy long sought by American leaders. The smooth functioning of international regulatory mechanisms established by the Bretton Woods agreements, the institution of European currency convertibility under the auspices of the International Monetary Fund, and the creation of the European Economic Community (EEC) attested to the realization of Washington's most important plans for the postwar international system. Accompanying trends in the global economy, however, particularly America's worsening balance-of-payments deficit, presented policymakers in the United States with an ironic dilemma. They could respond to America's increasingly unfavorable position in the world economy by trying to perfect the system of liberal trade their predecessors had done so much to create, or they could retreat from it.