ABSTRACT
In wartime, as we have seen, the Economic Section’s involvement in external economic policy was a limited one. Other departments – the Treasury, the Foreign Office, the Ministry of Economic Warfare, the Board of Trade, and the still privately owned Bank of England, for example – concerned themselves with the regulation of exports and imports, commercial negotiations with other countries, bulk purchase agreements, exchange control, restriction of enemy access to supplies, and so on. With these matters the Section had little to do. It was actively involved early in the war in debates on import policy and export surpluses, and took part in discussions towards the end of 1942 on reparations and policy towards Germany after the war, Robbins, Meade, and Fleming all submitting papers to an interdepartmental committee on the subject. 1 Issues of commercial policy, forecasts of the post-war balance of payments, and preparations for what became the American Loan negotiations in 1945 also occupied the Section. In general, however, its main interests during the war in external economic policy was in the proposals discussed in chapter 7 for the establishment of new international institutions such as the IMF, IBRD, and ITO.
