ABSTRACT
Third world earnings remitted to banks are lost to commerce and fewer goods sold mean fewer jobs. As bluntly stated by the Committee staff, the drying up of markets and jobs is ‘the direct outgrowth of administration policies which are tantamount to telling debtor nations that they must promise to continue paying interest and stop purchasing United States (US) products.’ Stuart Tucker told the Committee: In 1984, the US had 560,000 fewer jobs due to the decline of exports to the Third World since 1980. For US farmers, the unkindest cut of all was perhaps the announcement made early in 1985 by the giant agribusiness and grain trading firm Cargill. The continent was the US’ third largest client, ranking just behind Western Europe and Japan. The first and most striking fact is the sharp fall-off in everyone’s trade with the Southern hemisphere during the second, deeply recessionary period of the 1980s.
