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211 Annals Am. Acad. Pol. & Soc. Sci. ix (1940)

handle is hein.cow/anamacp0211 and id is 1 raw text is: FOREWORD FOREIGN commerce is seemingly possessed of the asserted traditional fickleness of the female-we cannot get along with it and we cannot get along without it. For a nation to engage in foreign trade, it must be prepared to buy as well as to sell. All shades of opinion agree that selling is beneficial-jobs are created at home and our country collects the cash, whatever that may be. But that is the rub! To maintain these beneficial sales, we must be willing to provide a means whereby foreign purchasers may possess the cash with which to pay their bills to us. The most common means of providing this purchasing power, and a means that has been employed for thousands of years, is to purchase the products of other countries. That means importing foreign merchandise. Immediately, in this country, a sixth intuitional sense revolts at this prospect. Sell our goods, yes; buy the goods of foreigners, horrors! On the other hand, we cannot get along without foreign trade. Not only would we lose the sales and the jobs that such sales pro- vide, but we would also miss the rubber, the silk, the sugar, the coffee, the tin, and other articles that our importing provides. The only alternative for the conduct of foreign trade is a policy of outright national self-sufficiency. Every generation produces its exponents of this doctrine. In order to present a well-rounded volume, an article on this subject was originally planned. Each known self-sufficiency exponent, in turn, was invited to contribute this treatise. One after another refused the invitation. Indeed, the most prolific writer on this topic, one who has gained a national reputation as an arch self- sufficiency protagonist, not only begged off, but denied the allegation! Is wisdom justified of her children? The present volume examines the current models for providing the quid pro quo for the maintenance of export trade. The United Kingdom considers foreign trade her life line. Germany wailed a few years ago that she must export or die. Japan extends benevolent protection to China to assure economic security. The United States enacts a Reciprocal Trade Agreements Act for the purpose of restoring em- ployment, reviving world markets, and hastening the return of prosperity. In order, therefore, to continue the flow of exports to world markets, nations have ex- hausted the devices whereby foreigners could be assisted and induced to buy their goods. Beyond the pale of normal import trade that itself would support a substantial volume of foreign sales, nations have negotiated, cajoled, threatened. Current models of foreign trade promotion run the gamut of open trade agreements with reciprocal advantages, to trade channelizing and juggling arrangements, and finally to military invasion and conquest. Behind this formidable array of governmental foreign trade devices, the indi- vidual foreign trader frantically plies his trade. He travels, he sends letters and cables, he advertises, he dispatches salesmen and appoints foreign distributors, he packs and ships, he arranges financing. But in so doing he may be only beating the wind if foreign governments have taxed his wares beyond endurance or have decreed a limit on the extent of his sales or have established arrangements with other foreign competitors that annihilate his trade or have erected financial barriers rendering it impossible to sell at competitive prices or even to obtain his funds at all. It is not untrue to say that today the conduct of foreign trade is not only a question of the foreign trade organization of the individual exporter and importer; it is also a question of whether or not he is permitted to trade at all.

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