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An inventor built a machine that provided jobs for his community. On his way to delivering the device to a nearby factory, his truck stalled as he crossed a railroad, just as the Orient Express sped around a curve. Spotting a farmer sitting on a fence, the inventor yelled for help. “What are you worried about?” spat back the farmer. “Y'ain’t been hurt yet.” A chinaware producer, seeking to restrict imports, related this anecdote to Congress in 1947: The speeding train of free trade was menacing his industry (the helpless truck) while President Harry S. Truman (the farmer) allegedly scoffed at such alarmism, contemptuously allowing imports to destroy vital businesses.1 After World War II, advocates of liberal trade reasoned differently. Protectionism, they argued, undermined efforts to create a peaceful and prosperous global economic order based on the unfettered flow of goods across borders. They adhered to the theory of comparative advantage, in which each nation exported its most efficiently produced goods and bought those items made cheaper elsewhere, even if they competed with goods produced at home. But in Secretary of State Cordell Hull's vision, trade also had a diplomatic mission. For him and the bureaucrats occupied with commercial matters in the State Department, free trade went hand in hand with internationalism. They sought open doors for exporters through rules of nondiscriminatory trade – the pursuit of “multilateralism” – under the General Agreement on Tariffsand Trade (GATT). Yet they found their dream of a free-trade order dashed by pragmatic political and diplomatic calculations that arose during and after the Second World War.
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