United States Foreign Aid Programs: Past Perspectives and Future Needs

Extract

For the past five or six years American foreign economic policy has constantly been forced to scramble to keep pace with rapidly changing reality. On March 30, 1950, the President entrusted the retiring Secretary of the Army, Gordon Gray, with responsibility for “a careful analysis of the various factors bearing on the present disparity between imports and exports.” Mr. Gray scarcely had time to assemble a staff and begin an intensive investigation when the attack on South Korea introduced significant alterations into the factual setting of the world's economy.