Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- General introduction
- Editorial note
- 1 BRETTON WOODS AND AFTER, APRIL 1944–MARCH 1946
- 2 COMMERCIAL POLICY, DECEMBER 1941–DECEMBER 1945
- 3 REPARATIONS, SEPTEMBER 1941–DECEMBER 1945
- Appendix: Selections from the Articles of Agreement of the International Monetary Fund
- Acknowledgements
- List of Documents Reproduced
- Index
2 - COMMERCIAL POLICY, DECEMBER 1941–DECEMBER 1945
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 November 2012
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- General introduction
- Editorial note
- 1 BRETTON WOODS AND AFTER, APRIL 1944–MARCH 1946
- 2 COMMERCIAL POLICY, DECEMBER 1941–DECEMBER 1945
- 3 REPARATIONS, SEPTEMBER 1941–DECEMBER 1945
- Appendix: Selections from the Articles of Agreement of the International Monetary Fund
- Acknowledgements
- List of Documents Reproduced
- Index
Summary
From his ‘Proposals to Counter the German “New Order”’ (JMK, vol. XXV, pp. 7–16) onwards Keynes had taken an occasional part in discussions of post-war trade policy. In the course of his Washington visit in 1941 he had helped undermine the attempt of the Board of Trade to extend the Anglo-American Trade Agreement of 1938 and had played an important role in the early discussions of the form of the master Lend Lease Agreement. After his return to London, throughout the rest of 1941 and the early part of 1942 he continued to take part in the Lend Lease Agreement discussions, especially those surrounding Article VII (JMK, vol. XXIII, pp. 143–7, chs 4 and 6).
In December 1941 Mr Pasvolsky of the State Department completed a memorandum entitled ‘Possibilities of Conflict of British and American Official Views on Post-War Economic Policy’. He passed a copy of this to Redvers Opie for transmission in confidence to London. On reading the memorandum, Keynes commented
My notes on Mr Pasvolsky's memo:
1. The bulk of this paper, which is a very able one within its own limitations, is a dogmatic statement of the virtues of laissez-faire in international trade on the lines familiar forty years ago, much of which is true, but without any attempt to state theoretically or to tackle practically the difficulties which both the theory and the history of the last twenty years has impressed on most modern minds.
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- Information
- The Collected Writings of John Maynard Keynes , pp. 239 - 327Publisher: Royal Economic SocietyPrint publication year: 1978