Amigo shoring (1940)

There has been an intensifying debate lately within America's circle of allies regarding the merits of "de-risking" the economic relations they conduct with autocratic great powers. Sometimes this debate makes explicit appeal to the novel name of "friend shoring." The name may be new, but what it represents – namely an American (and allied) desire to minimize security problems stemming from economic ­interdependence – can be dated back to the middle of 1940, with the short-lived Inter-American Trading Corporation (IATC). This bold initiative was the first great instantiation of friend shoring in US foreign policy, and was focused upon the Latin American republics to the southward. This article's purpose is to describe and analyze, in theoretical and empirical context, that early, unsuccessful, instance of friend shoring, and to suggest ways in which the IATC experience might be considered of relevance to the contemporary debate over the security consequences of interdependence

Autocracy · Context (archaeology · Economics · Economy · Latin Americans · Offshoring · Outsourcing · Political economy · Political science · Politics · Relevance (law · Shoring · Sociology · Global Peace and Security Dynamics · History · International Relations and Foreign Policy · International Relations in Latin America · Law