Power And Plenty, p 455 has a nice passage reprising how the US moved toward free trade already in 1930, and the Presidency, fatefully, took over trade from Congress, The U.S. Reciprocal Trade Agreements Act, 1934. It happened under FDR.
Of course, Congress was no place to lodge responsibility for anything requiring long term leadership, such as trade or industrial policy.
But then, neither was the Presidency.
The Japanese had MITI, Chalmers Johnson. We had nothing that even came close.
New Deal free trade was for liberal, peace loving, regimes everywhere, to fight the global Depression, not just for Depression era Americans.
In the wake of other consequences flowing from WWI, this free trade would lead, in decades to come, to a frightful series of developments both environmentally, commercially, and militarily, including the industrial military and agricultural booming of most of the then underdeveloped world, and the hollowing out of the US industrial base, first by Japan, then by everyone else with low wages.
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