William Emmanuel Rappard, Du déséquilibre intercontinental à propos du plan Marshall (1948)

Rappard’s journal article interprets the Marshall Plan as an emergency response to a longstanding reversal of economic power between Europe and America. Its seven sections move from the history of transatlantic trade and credit through wartime destruction and American assistance to a sustained examination of the European Economic Cooperation Committee’s September 1947 report. The conclusion asks what could turn indispensable relief into durable economic relations. Rappard’s central distinction is between unequal wealth, which can sustain productive exchange, and an imbalance that deprives one partner of the capacity to pay. European recovery requires more than American financing: it demands institutional changes on both sides of the Atlantic.

The historical argument prevents the dollar shortage from appearing merely as a consequence of the latest war. European migration, capital, and goods initially financed American development. From approximately 1880, American merchandise exports exceeded imports, while Europe continued earning through shipping, tourism, remittances, and overseas investments. The First World War weakened these compensating revenues and accelerated America’s emergence as a creditor. Rappard insists:

Il résulte de toutes ces circonstances que le déséquilibre économique et financier entre l'ancien et le nouveau monde, qui caractérise si tragiquement leurs relations aujourd'hui, ne date pas d'hier.

English translation: It follows from all these circumstances that the economic and financial imbalance between the old and the new world, which so tragically characterizes their relations today, is not of recent origin.

His statistical reconstruction nevertheless acknowledges uncertainty. Interwar capital movements reflected panic and the search for security as well as debt settlement; gold entering America therefore cannot simply be treated as payment to American creditors. The Second World War made the underlying asymmetry catastrophic by simultaneously expanding American productive capacity and destroying European production, foreign assets, shipping, and other external revenues.

American aid consequently combines generosity with national interest. Rappard follows the transition from wartime lend-lease and broadly distributed postwar relief toward assistance concentrated on countries identified with peace and political liberty. His reading of Marshall’s Harvard address emphasizes external aid as a means of breaking Europe’s vicious circle, a coordinated recovery programme rather than intermittent relief, political conditions governing eligibility, and European responsibility for initiating the programme. The invitation’s original geographical breadth gives way to the sixteen participating countries’ collective response.

The Committee’s report is both an economic investigation and a political appeal to Congress. Rappard admires its achievement while detecting an interested mixture of pessimism about present conditions and optimism about future recovery. He reorganizes its evidence around three questions: Europe’s needs and resources, the relationship between European effort and American supplies, and payment for those supplies. Food deficits, coal shortages, and equipment requirements reveal interconnected constraints. Petroleum dependence represents a lasting geographical disadvantage; limits on German steel production, by contrast, arise substantially from political antagonism.

The recovery programme rests on production, domestic financial stability, cooperation, and increased exports. These cannot substitute for the imports needed to make recovery possible:

L'effort européen et l'apport américain se conditionnent, en effet, étroitement l'un l'autre. Ce sont les deux branches d'une paire de ciseaux qui ne peuvent faire œuvre utile qu'à la condition d'être réunies.

English translation: European effort and the American contribution are, indeed, closely dependent on each other. They are the two blades of a pair of scissors that can perform useful work only if they are joined.

Aid must supply the food, fuel, and machinery that enable greater output, while European governments must restore monetary incentives and undertake stabilization. Their pledges expose an unprecedented dependence on an overseas creditor. Rappard declines to condemn either American imperialism or European servility without identifying a practicable alternative.

His sharpest criticism concerns European cooperation. National import restrictions remain pervasive, proposed customs unions are hedged with delays, and collective projects fall short of their rhetoric. He supports freer labour movement and trade but judges concrete bilateral arrangements more effective than some conspicuous international conferences. Cooperation must change economic conditions, not merely exchange information and declarations of goodwill.

The payment calculations expose the limits of the programme’s optimism. The projected 1948 external deficit exceeds eight billion dollars, overwhelmingly involving the American continent; the projected four-year deficit totals roughly $22.44 billion. Even declining deficits do not explain repayment. The report effectively relies on creditor forbearance while postponing the question of solvency.

Rappard’s conclusion distinguishes this predicament from productive borrowing. Unequal resources and temporary export surpluses helped develop America; they are not inherently pathological. Persistent inability to purchase another country’s surplus, however, impoverishes both parties. Immediate assistance follows a different logic:

Comme il s'agit donc, dans le plan Marshall, d'une opération qui est politique par ses buts et qui n'est économique que par ses moyens, le déséquilibre international dont il est né ne saurait, pour le moment, en entraver l'exécution.

English translation: Since the Marshall Plan is therefore an operation that is political in its aims and economic only in its means, the international imbalance from which it arose cannot, for the moment, obstruct its implementation.

If assistance preserves peace and prevents communist victories, it earns its intended political return. Peace would nevertheless make the economic question unavoidable: America cannot be expected to subsidize Europe indefinitely. Europe must become a productive customer and solvent debtor through modernization, continental-scale competition, tourism, and collaboration with American entrepreneurs and investors. Its “Americanization” concerns industrial methods and organization, not necessarily tastes or products. Adjustment must also be reciprocal:

Sans un abaissement des barrières douanières du nouveau monde, il ne saurait y avoir de retour à un équilibre international normal.

English translation: Without a lowering of the new world’s tariff barriers, there can be no return to a normal international equilibrium.

American openness to imports and immigration thus complements European reform. The article’s enduring relevance lies in its insistence that relief, productivity, sovereignty, and creditor responsibility form one problem: rebuilding Europe alone cannot restore a viable world economy.