A Marshall Plan for the 1990s [antikvár]

Introduction CHARLES A. CERAMI In the nnid-1980s, the Sunday New York Times published a two-part series in which I called attention to a coming world unemployment crisis and then proposed a solution that has come to be known as A Marshall Plan for the 90s. This would differ greatly from the original U.S. aid plan that revived Europe after World War II, being multilateral in nature and far more openly profit-oriented. But the spirit of helping others to take part in the mainstream of commerce would be present now as it was then. Within the first week, favorable letters came in from the academic and business communities, calls came from U.S. political leaders who were contending for the 1988 presidential nomination, and a good many government figures abroad asked me to come and talk about ways to build on this idea and put it into action. The origin of this program went back two years earlier, when three U.S. government agencies—the departments of State, Treasury, and Commerce—had commissioned me to direct a study of the world trade picture. During the months between, I had held scores of personal and off-the-record talks with leading diplomats and policymakers of at least 40 countries. These had led me more and more toward the conclusion that eventually appeared in the Times' articles: Namely, that the critical problem is not trade, as such, but unemployment. Trade is used by nearly all nations as a way to create more jobs in their own home area and thus "ship their unemployment to other countries," as some put it. But work on the details of trade and cutting the barriers that impede it would not address the massive aspects of the problem. For this phe-