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Trade was a very small part of the US postwar economy. The economic boom was almost entirely Americans making stuff and selling it to other Americans: http://g

by jordanb 11y ago

Trade was a very small part of the US postwar economy. The economic boom was almost entirely Americans making stuff and selling it to other Americans: http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/2012/11/19/opinion/111912krugman3/111912krugman3-blog480.jpg http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/2012/11/19/opinion/11191...

deleted 11y ago
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cpursley 11y ago
You reinforce my point. Buying products from overseas was not viable because their capacity was bombed to hell. Not many electric washing machines coming out of these places after the war: [UK] http://www.bbc.co.uk/schools/primaryhistory/world_war2/scotlands_blitz/includes/resources/images/clydebank_ruins.jpg http://www.bbc.co.uk/schools/primaryhistory/world_war2/scotl... [Japan] https://www.ibiblio.org/hyperwar/USA/USA-PR-Japan/img/USA-PR-Japan-447.2.jpg https://www.ibiblio.org/hyperwar/USA/USA-PR-Japan/img/USA-PR... [Germany] http://cdn.history.com/sites/2/2013/12/berlin_ww2-P.jpeg http://cdn.history.com/sites/2/2013/12/berlin_ww2-P.jpeg
- jordanb 11y ago
  You're making a case against free trade then. If things were so good for so many Americans because we weren't trading with anyone, then why'd we start?
Animats 11y ago
Right. Ocean shipping, before containers and faxes, used to be much more expensive, much slower, required far more packing, and was far less reliable. As the graph points out, US foreign trade was under 5% of GDP in the 1950s. Much of that was raw materials, not manufactured goods. (The concept of ordering something from across an ocean and reliably getting it undamaged it is quite modern. Before containers, things had to be crated, in crates so strong they could be banged around and stacked. A packed manufactured item could weigh 5x its unpacked weight. Paperwork usually traveled with the item, and maybe it got there. Faxes helped a lot, especially across language boundaries. Purchase orders and invoices are something of a universal language; if you can read item number, quantity, price, and destination address, you can probably do the transaction.)

by jordanb 11y ago

deleted 11y ago

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cpursley 11y ago

You reinforce my point. Buying products from overseas was not viable because their capacity was bombed to hell. Not many electric washing machines coming out of these places after the war: [UK] http://www.bbc.co.uk/schools/primaryhistory/world_war2/scotlands_blitz/includes/resources/images/clydebank_ruins.jpg http://www.bbc.co.uk/schools/primaryhistory/world_war2/scotl... [Japan] https://www.ibiblio.org/hyperwar/USA/USA-PR-Japan/img/USA-PR-Japan-447.2.jpg https://www.ibiblio.org/hyperwar/USA/USA-PR-Japan/img/USA-PR... [Germany] http://cdn.history.com/sites/2/2013/12/berlin_ww2-P.jpeg http://cdn.history.com/sites/2/2013/12/berlin_ww2-P.jpeg

jordanb 11y ago
You're making a case against free trade then. If things were so good for so many Americans because we weren't trading with anyone, then why'd we start?

Animats 11y ago

Right. Ocean shipping, before containers and faxes, used to be much more expensive, much slower, required far more packing, and was far less reliable. As the graph points out, US foreign trade was under 5% of GDP in the 1950s. Much of that was raw materials, not manufactured goods. (The concept of ordering something from across an ocean and reliably getting it undamaged it is quite modern. Before containers, things had to be crated, in crates so strong they could be banged around and stacked. A packed manufactured item could weigh 5x its unpacked weight. Paperwork usually traveled with the item, and maybe it got there. Faxes helped a lot, especially across language boundaries. Purchase orders and invoices are something of a universal language; if you can read item number, quantity, price, and destination address, you can probably do the transaction.)