Changes

His doubts about the ability of foreign economic policy to contribute to domestic recovery were reflected in his approach to the London Economic Conference. In June 1933, representatives from 66 countries gathered in London to try to find a way out of the Depression through cooperation in areas such as the reduction of trade barriers and the stabilization of exchange rates. Countries that remained on the gold standard, such as France, sought to convince countries that had left the gold standard, particularly the United Kingdom (inSeptember 1931) and the United States (in April 1933), to agree to stabilize the par values of their currencies. The chances for success were already slim when, on July 3, Roosevelt rejected such an agreement as “a purely artificial and temporary experiment,” asserting that a “sound internal economic situation” was more important to a country’s prosperity than the external value of its currency. The conference ended less than a month later with little to show for its efforts.

In 1934, the Roosevelt Administration undertook two initiatives that signaled a desire to re-engage economically with the rest of the world. The first was the creation of the Export-Import Bank. In February 1934, Roosevelt established the bank as an institution designed to finance U.S. trade with the newly-recognized Soviet Union. He created a second Export-Import Bank the following month, this one intended to finance trade with Cuba; in July 1934, the second bank’s field of operations was expanded to include all countries save the Soviet Union. In 1935, the two banks were combined and Congress passed legislation granting the newly unified bank more powers and more capital. In the years before the start of the Second World War, while it did extend credits to countries outside the Western Hemisphere such as Italy and China, the Export-Import Bank concentrated its efforts in Latin America, where it proved an important component of the Good Neighbor policy.