John Maynard Keynes

Free Trader or Protectionist?

Joseph R. Cammarosano

• Publisher: Lexington Books
• Year: 2013
• Edition: 1
• eBook ISBN:
  9780739189528
• Topic: Economics
• Subtopic: Econometrics
• Index: Economics

Over the course of his professional life, John Maynard Keynes altered his views from free trade in the classical tradition to restricted trade. At the end of his career, his position on the issue was still not categorically resolved even though the evidence seems to suggest that he moved closer to a system of managed trade. In that model, nations would not leave their foreign trade interests open to the vagaries of the free market, but rather exercise some degree of control over them just as they would their domestic economies. Nevertheless, there is no general agreement among economists as to whether Keynes ended his career in the camp of the free traders or aligned himself with the protectionists. John Maynard Keynes: Free Trader or Protectionist? seeks an answer to this question by analyzing Keynes' own views on this issue, as stated in his major publications, letters, speeches, testimony before government bodies, newspaper articles, participation in conferences, and other sources. Through this detailed review of what Keynes himself had to say on the issue as opposed to what others have alleged, this book strives to make a significant contribution to the resolution of this issue.

Table of contents

• Title Page
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction
• The Priority of Internal over External Considerations as evidenced by Keynes’s Opposition to the Pre–World War I International Gold Standard
• Keynes’s Attack on the International Gold Standard
• Keynes’s Opposition to the Restoration of the British Pound to the Pre–World War I Parity of Exchange
• Keynes’s Search for a Managed Monetary Standard
• The Evolution of Keynes’s Thinking on Foreign Trade from World War I to World War II
• Keynes’s Early Free-Trade Views
• Keynes’s Views on Commercial Policy in his Treatise on Money
• Keynes’s Endorsement of Protectionism as a Solution to Britain’s Economic Problems
• Keynes’s Proposal for a Revenue Tariff
• Keynes’s Advocacy of National Autarky
• The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money and Its Relevance for Keynes’s Foreign Trade Views
• Keynes’s Views on Foreign Trade during the Period of the General Theory of Employment, Interest, and Money
• Keynes’s Views on Foreign Trade during and after World War II
• Keynes and the Currency Proposals for the Expansion of Multilateral International Trade Following the End of World War II
• Keynes and the Anglo-American Loan
• Summary and Conclusions
• Bibliography
• Index
• About the Author