From a more conventional American perspective, however, free trade and its attendant benefits were themselves a sufficient objective and justification for the ERP programme. The United States had been particularly hard hit by the trading and export slump of the thirties and spared no effort to convince others of the importance to post-war recovery of liberalized tariff regimes and convertible currencies. Like English Liberals’ enthusiasm for free trade in the era before 1914, such American pleas for the unrestricted movement of goods were not altogether un-self-interested.
Free trade is (was) in America's self-interest.
