International trade

Bibliographic data

Monograph

Identifikator:: 1758394757

URN:: urn:nbn:de:zbw-retromon-136209

Document type:: Monograph

Author:: Taussig, Frank William http://d-nb.info/gnd/120199459

Title:: International trade

Place of publication:: New York, NY

Publisher:: Macmillan

Year of publication:: 1927

Scope:: XXI, 425 Seiten; graph. Darst.

Digitisation:: 2021

Collection:: Economics Books

Usage license:: Get license information via the feedback formular.

Chapter

Document type:: Monograph

Structure type:: Chapter

Title:: Part II. Problems of verification

Collection:: Economics Books

THE UNITED STATES, III. AFTER 1914 333 in 1923-25 was that the United States had then definitely reached the stage of being an exporter of capital; that the causes which in pre-war days had brought about an excess of exports no longer operated with such magnitude as to enable the former “favor- able” balance to be maintained; that if this basic cause of pros- perity was to endure, the one way to assure the propitious result was an uninterrupted series of loans to foreigners. I speak of favorable balance and propitious result, because most persons who discoursed on the present and the future, whether govern- ment officials or representatives of the business and financial world, took the good old mercantilist view which these phrases imply. A great volume of exports, and especially a great excess of exports over imports, was regarded as a vivifying tonic for business, and especially as the means by which a burdensome surplus product of manufactured and of agricultural products could find the necessary foreign market. It is a familiar attitude : exports, and still more exports, are the indispensable condition of sustained industrial vigor and of ever growing prosperity. True, the new position of the United States as a creditor country was admitted to entail a tendency toward growing imports; foreigners, it was agreed, must pay the interest on their debts in goods. But this was merely a stronger reason for lending more and more to them, and so enabling the mounting imports to be offset by exports mounting still more. The dispassionate student will shrug his shoulders at all this. His interest will be in other directions — in the shifts of the vari- ous items of the complex situation and in the play of the underlying forces. The export of capital may wax and may wane. It will hardly cease; but it may prove of less commanding importance than commonly expected. The great excess of merchandise exports over imports may continue, or may be succeeded by an even balance, or may be replaced by an opposite relation — an excess of imports. The whole balance of international pay- ments, with all its interwoven and conflicting elements, subject ds it is to the possible decline or growth of almost every item, may take a shape quite beyond any foreshadowing. Most interesting

Access restriction

Copyright

fullscreen: International trade

Monograph

Chapter

Table of contents

Download

Monograph

Chapter

This page

Image fragment

Citation links

Citation recommendation