Читать книгу Financial Cold War. A View of Sino-US Relations from the Financial Markets онлайн

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As countries battled with the Depression era's high unemployment, they turned to competitive devaluations and tariff barriers in an effort to make their exports more competitive and to limit imports. These ‘beggar-thy-neighbour’ policies led to a collapse in global trade, significantly worsening the economic hardship. In the subsequent years and decades, the international trade and monetary policies of the interwar years became widely viewed as a major factor contributing to the outbreak of WW2.

At the Treasury, Harry White gained a reputation as an able economist and carved out a critical role for himself in international policy. He was also known to be quick-tempered and impatient, though he ‘was meticulously civil to anyone in a position to afford him access to the powerful’.ssss1 The focus of his work reflected the major trade and monetary issues of the time, into which he threw himself energetically. Competitive currency devaluations and their impact on global trade was an issue with which he concerned himself especially. He argued that a stabilisation in international monetary policy was required to increase foreign trade, which was an important factor in achieving the economic recovery that the Roosevelt Administration sought to bring about. This would require a new form of international monetary diplomacy. Competition between the Treasury and the State Department over control of this function was to open to White a huge opportunity.