Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of tables
- List of figures
- Acknowledgments
- 1 Introduction
- 2 Real exchange rate behavior under alternative international monetary regimes
- 3 Understanding 1921–1927: inflation and economic recovery in the 1920s
- 4 Bank Rate policy under the interwar gold standard
- 5 The Bank of France and the sterilization of gold, 1926–1932
- 6 International policy coordination in historical perspective: a view from the interwar years
- 7 The economic consequences of the franc Poincaré
- 8 Sterling and the tariff, 1929–1932
- 9 Exchange rates and economic recovery in the 1930s
- 10 The gold-exchange standard and the Great Depression
- 11 Hegemonic stability theories of the international monetary system
- References
- Index
8 - Sterling and the tariff, 1929–1932
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 21 March 2010
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of tables
- List of figures
- Acknowledgments
- 1 Introduction
- 2 Real exchange rate behavior under alternative international monetary regimes
- 3 Understanding 1921–1927: inflation and economic recovery in the 1920s
- 4 Bank Rate policy under the interwar gold standard
- 5 The Bank of France and the sterilization of gold, 1926–1932
- 6 International policy coordination in historical perspective: a view from the interwar years
- 7 The economic consequences of the franc Poincaré
- 8 Sterling and the tariff, 1929–1932
- 9 Exchange rates and economic recovery in the 1930s
- 10 The gold-exchange standard and the Great Depression
- 11 Hegemonic stability theories of the international monetary system
- References
- Index
Summary
Introduction
In February of 1932, less than six months after leaving the gold standard, Great Britain adopted a 10 percent ad valorem tariff on imports from foreign countries. For nearly two years, a number of politicians and economists had argued that Britain should abandon her traditional commitment to free trade and impose a general tariff, initially as a means of reducing unemployment and raising prices without driving herself off the gold standard, and later as a way of balancing her external accounts in order to defend the gold standard directly. Yet it was only after Britain was forced off the gold standard in September of 1931 by a combination of domestic and foreign events, and a floating exchange rate was adopted, that a general tariff was finally imposed.
With the demise of the gold standard, a tariff would seem to have retained no special advantage over increased public spending, a reduction in Bank Rate, or other remedies for domestic unemployment. Furthermore, with the adoption of a floating exchange rate, there was a sense in which there no longer remained a balance-of-payments “problem.” Thus, the decision to impose a tariff in 1932 has remained an unsolved mystery in the history of British economic policy.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Elusive StabilityEssays in the History of International Finance, 1919–1939, pp. 180 - 214Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 1990