Protection of Foreign Investments

Abstract

It is commonly assumed that the quest for foreign exchange, including among other methods excessive tariffs, import quotas, embargoes, preferences, subsidies, licenses, exchange controls, clearing agreement, currency depreciation, multiple currency, barter deals and discriminations of all kinds,1 and similar methods of crippling international trade, were the voluntary means by which certain countries gained advantage over others,2 resulting ultimately in an artificial channeling of international trade and stagnation on a wide scale. It is not sufficiently observed that the unwise arrangements of the Treaty of Versailles in keeping down the subsistence level of certain countries while promoting that of others, had much to do with the difficulties created for trade in the period between the two wars. Indeed, a strong argument could be made to show that the support of such a phenomenon as Hider by the German people was itself a product of that despair in which Central Europe found itself. It is now proposed to lift the barriers to international trade by injecting into the blood stream a large amount of American funds through UNRRA, the Bank for Development and Reconstruction and the Monetary Fund of the Bretton Woods agreements, from the Export-Import Bank, whose lending power has been greatly increased, and similar loans and devices. At the same time the powers that be have planted in the system such a treaty as is contemplated by the Potsdam Declaration, which under the guise of reparations eradicates the distinction between private and public property, reintroduces the element of slave labor, amputates territory, compels migrations, and eliminates Germany' as an industrial competitor. The same dispensation is contemplated for Japan. Students of international relations look with trepidation upon this artificial de-