Foreign Relations of the United States 1969–1976 Volume XXXI Foreign Economic Policy, 1973–1976

Editor:

Kathleen B. Rasmussen

General Editor:

Edward C. Keefer

United States Government Printing Office
Washington

Office of the Historian
Bureau of Public Affairs

Table of Contents

• Press Release
• Preface
• Sources
• Abbreviations and Terms
• Persons
• International Monetary Policy; Economic Summitry
• The End of Fixed Exchange Rates, January–March 1973 (Documents 1-37)
• Negotiating the New Rules, May 1973–June 1975 (Documents 38-90)
• The Economic Summit at Rambouillet, June 1975–January 1976 (Documents 91-129)
• The Economic Summit at Puerto Rico, March 1976–January 1977 (Documents 130-152)
• Trade Policy (Documents 153-241)
• Commodity Policy; North-South Relations (Documents 242-310)
• Index

Overview

This volume is part of a subseries of volumes of the Foreign Relations series that documents the most important issues in the foreign policy of the administrations of Richard M. Nixon and Gerald R. Ford. This volume documents U.S. foreign economic policy from 1973 to 1976, focusing on international monetary policy, economic summitry, trade policy, commodity policy, and North-South relations.

This volume has a tightly defined understanding of foreign economic policy, one that focuses on three significant areas: international monetary relations, international trade, and efforts to redress global economic inequalities. The section on international monetary policy and economic summitry focuses on the aftermath of the collapse of the fixed exchange rate regime envisioned at the 1944 Bretton Woods conference. It includes documents on the monetary crisis of February and March 1973; efforts to reform the international monetary system, with particular emphasis on the issues of exchange rate flexibility and the future of gold; and the creation of the G–7 summit. The section on trade policy, more than any other section in this volume, demonstrates the influence of domestic politics on foreign economic policy; this is particularly clear in the documents on the 1973 decision to impose export controls and the White House’s efforts to secure passage of a major piece of trade reform legislation, the Trade Act of 1974. This section also includes documents on the beginnings of a new round of negotiations under the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade, with particular emphasis on the role of agriculture in those negotiations, as well as foreign fears of U.S. protectionism. The final section, on commodity policy and North-South issues, documents the approach of the Nixon and Ford administrations to the persistent economic disparities between the industrialized nations of the North and the less developed countries of the South; it also explores U.S. attempts to grapple with the global trade in primary commodities in a post-1973 oil embargo world.