Economic Defense of the Americas

The condition in foreign trade of which this proposal is symptomatic arrests our attention. From the beginning, Nazi Germany made foreign trade an instrument of political power. She set out to organize her import trade in the interests of her exports and her foreign policy. She established double money, subsidized her exporters, and negotiated agreements with economically weak countries under which she forced them to divert their purchases to Germany from countries in which they would ordinarily buy. Trade was thus canalized and reduced in substance to barter. The traditional methods of international exchange were set at naught and for them were substituted subsidies, dumping, exchange control and currency manipulation, government monopolies, quotas, and, in general, quantitative restrictions on the movement of goods. The German state, in short, took over private trade and finance to serve its political ends and then justified and supported its economic aggression with propaganda and other methods of an authoritarian state. Germany was not slow in extending her trade methods, supported by the preaching of her ideology, to Latin American countries. The exportable surpluses of food and raw materials of these countries offered a ready basis for barter arrangements. The German trade offensive was accompanied by a policy which sought control of industries, mines, and transportation, particularly air lines, and which by radio and other means spread Nazi doctrines. These methods were not without effect on groups which profited economically, and on German minorities. At the Lima Conference in 1938 the delegates were aware of this threat to the independence and security of this hemisphere. Mr. Hull, the American Seccretary of State, reminded the Conference in his opening address that armed force is not the only instrumentality by which nations can be conquered. And Jose Maria Cantilo, the Foreign Minister of Argentina, also said

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