Clashing Over Commerce: A History of US Trade Policy (Markets and Governments in Economic History)

by Douglas A. Irwin

Responsibility for negotiating the agreement fell to Undersecretary of State George Ball. It was not a task that he and other liberals relished. As Ball (1982, 188) recalled, “During his Presidential campaign, [Kennedy] had committed himself to taking care of textile import problems, and the industry promptly demanded that he redeem his promise. The President turned the problem over to me. It caused me more personal anguish than any other task I undertook during my total of twelve years in different branches of the government.” Ball fundamentally opposed protecting the industry and could not understand why domestic producers did not invest abroad to take advantage of lower wages in Asia: “Rather than concentrating 1.3 percent of our labor force on the production of textiles, our country might have shifted more rapidly to the capital-intensive and knowledge-intensive industries and services that befitted a nation with an advanced economy” (188).