Published online by Cambridge University Press: 18 July 2011
The United States is at present creditor to the world. Since the war more than $25 billion has been put into various foreign aid programs. Government loans, military assistance, ECA assistance have combined in a great assault on world problems. Yet, great as has been the government-to-government assistance extended by the United States, and substantial as has been aid given by such organs of American policy as the Export-Import Bank not only to foreign governments but to private business, it is not only conceded but argued by government officials as well as private business that a job remains to be done which cannot be done in this way. For the doing of that job, private enterprise and private capital investment are needed. In testimony on various aspects of the Point IV program over the course of the last year, this necessity has been stressed no less by government than by business witnesses.
1 Although there is not a great deal on this point in the standard texts, it has been suggested that this absence of statement is attributable not to doubts on the subject but to the fact that the inviolability of the property of aliens in time of peace was generally recognized as being indisputable. (Bullington, , “Problems of International Law in the Mexican Constitution of 1917,” American Journal of International Law, XXI (1927), 685CrossRefGoogle Scholar, 695.)
2 Italics mine.
3 The Report of the Second Session of the Preparatory Committee of the United Nations Conference on Trade and Employment stated: “The extent to which transfers of … payment into other currencies are to be allowed is for determination by the Member government in accordance with its general foreign exchange policy maintained consistently with the Articles of Agreement of the International Monetary Fund.”
4 It should be explicitly understood that the purpose of the preceding paragraph is not to justify, nor to judge, the attitude there described. It is intended rather to point out that this attitude is a fact, and a fact which must be reckoned with as much as certain regional prejudices in the United States are facts to be reckoned with in American politics.
5 H.R. 6026, 81st Cong., 1st Sess. A companion bill was introduced in the Senate by Senator Saltonstall: S. 2561, 81st Cong., 1st Sess.
6 H.R. 6835, 81st Cong., 2d Sess. After consideration by the House Foreign Affairs Committee, a modified version (H.R. 7346, 81st Cong., 2d Sess.) was introduced by Congressman Kee, and is substantially incorporated in the legislation which has now been enacted.