The Bretton Woods system embodied a self-imposed liquidity constraint. Trade policy was subordinated to the maintenance of official foreign reserves used to defend fixed exchange rates. In Australia and New Zealand, reserves were considered a form of national self-insurance against the instability of export receipts and the liquidity problem was often referred to as the ‘foreign exchange constraint’ – as if it were exogenously given rather than the result of certain policies, and it reinforced inward-looking trade policies. International financial arrangements, including severe restrictions on cross-border capital flows, delimited thought and action in connection with Australian and New Zealand trade policy.