When the people of Pohnpei, in the Eastern Caroline Islands, voted against Free Association with the United States in the 1983 Federated States of Micronesia plebiscite, expatriate observers were stunned. How could people so tied to an economy utterly dependent upon American subsidies oppose a new political relationship that guarantees the FSM SUS1.4 billion ver the next 15 years? American policy in Micronesia has favoured the development of this dependent commercial economy, and the existence of small trade stores in nearly every community suggests that the Pohnpei themselves have eagerly participated in the evolution of a consumer culture. Yet many Pohnpei stated that they oppose an extension of political relations with the U.S. precisely because of the underlying economic issues: in calling for independence, as they did, they explicitly recognized that they were rejecting the economic transformation planned for them (Petersen, 1984a, 1985a, 1986). This paper seeks to examine the place of these trade stores within contemporary Pohnpei economy, society, and culture, in order to provide one source of understanding for recent Pohnpei political events. While Pohnpei certainly remains well-situated within the Micronesian cash economy, fundamental notions of capitalist commercial enterprise, within which this cash economy is subsumed (e.g. profit, debt, and credit) explain neither the history of individual Pohnpei stores nor the political economic context in which a society, ostensibly dependent upon commerce, turns willingly toward less commercial conditions. In short, I am suggesting that Pohnpei trade stores do not play a genuinely commercial role in the Pohnpei economy; the profit and loss, credit and debt activities of these stores can be better understood as reinforcing social, economic, political, and cultural aspects of the native Pohnpei redistributive economy. Indeed, commercial activities, especially retail sales, in many Pacific island societies might be better understood in terms of indigenous redistributive concepts than as failed examples of nascent capitalism. Some scholars, notably Romola McSwain (1977), report that such commercial failures occur as the result of ignorance and the tyranny of traditional social ethics. Storekeepers who fail are 'bewildered' and attribute their losses to the vaguely perceived malevolence of Europeans. This paper seeks to demonstrate that on Pohnpei these failures are in some degree deliberate, and are purposefully employed as a means of integrating cash into traditional social life with as little disruption as possible. McSwain is concerned specifically with demonstrating that among the people of Karkar Island in Papua New Guinea's Madang Province, 'considerable economic, political and educational change has occurred over a relatively long period, yet the traditional intellectual system remains, leading to a situation of potential frustration' (1977:xvi). While the data from Pohnpei are in complete agreement with the first part of