Trade, Yes; Aid, No

June 9, 1958

Perhaps nothing this country could have done could have prevented the crisis in France. The diseases of French democracy are of long standing. In 1872, in a preface to his English Constitution, Walter Bagehot pointed out that the French Assembly “is divided into parties and into sections of parties” which habitually “scream”; that “real discussion is impossible,” that the French “Parliament can neither choose men nor measures”; that, as the French Premier would not have “the power of dissolving the Assembly . . . the Assembly would be always changing its ministry, that having no reason to fear the penalty which that change so often brings in England, they would be ready to make it once a month.”

The defects of the French system were never corrected. The Fourth Republic is (was?) more unworkable than the Third. Even in his desperate last-minute proposals for constitutional reform, Premier Pflimlin never dared ask for the unequivocal power of dissolution. It was precisely the pathological fear in France of the man on horseback that led to the built-in executive weakness which caused the return of the man on horseback.

FUTILITY OF AID

Not only has our postwar policy in France proved to be futile, but serious question must be raised whether it did not actually help to precipitate the crisis. Passing over our political interference and considering economic measures alone, if we had not so freely poured in government economic aid, and sponsored such unsound institutions as the International Monetary Fund, with its support of exchange control and artificial currency rates, France would have had to try to attract private capital. In these circumstances, it would not have plunged so heavily into draining, socialistic adventures. It would have had to abandon paper-money inflation and to stabilize the franc.

Much the same might be said of the end results of our aid to South American countries. As in France, that aid has proved to be futile either in preventing currency deterioration or in getting them to like us. Yet the response of the Administration to demonstrated failure, to insults and violence, has been to suggest still more aid! As James Burnham summarized the situation in National Review (May 31), how can “a nation that abandons its consuls—like Angus Ward—to Asian jails, that stands passive while its soldiers die slowly in Siberian slave camps, its aviators are brainwashed in filthy Chinese cells, its planes shot down by an Adriatic gangster, its diplomatic establishment smashed and burned, its flag cursed,” command respect? “If we do not respect ourselves, why should others respect us? And the nation’s response to the Nixon rocks? Abjectly confess how badly we have behaved. Pour out more money to the nations that have allowed these things to come to pass.”

DESCRIPTION OF TRADE

Yet there is one respect in which foreign nations do have a just complaint against us on economic grounds. This concerns our trade policy. It concerns our farm policy of first trying to make our farm exports arbitrarily expensive by crop controls and support-prices, then disrupting and demoralizing foreign markets and production by dumping our surpluses abroad at absurdly low prices. It concerns the vagaries of our government stock-piling and price-support for foreign metals. It concerns our policy of keeping out imports by excessive tariff rates or actual quotas. It concerns our sudden boosts or threatened boosts of tariffs whenever foreign competition seems on the point of succeeding.

We do not owe France or any South American nation any free gravy at all. Our giveaway program costs us dearly but does them no good. It merely degrades our relations. But we did owe and do owe France, Latin America, and every free country freedom to trade with us, on settled and predictable terms. And we should adopt lower tariffs not as a favor to them, but primarily in justice to our own consumers, who should be able to buy what they want where they can get it on the best terms. In brief, we should adopt seriously and literally the slogan that has received so much empty lip service in recent years: Trade, not Aid.