Richard Schüller, Foreign Trade Policies of the United States and Soviet Russia (June 1947)

Richard Schüller’s journal article examines the emerging postwar trade order through the apparent antagonism between American nondiscrimination and Soviet economic planning. Its four sections move from bilateral American–Soviet trade to Anglo-American negotiations, the proposed Soviet regional bloc, and the developing International Trade Organization charter. The central argument is that Soviet opposition arises less from direct commercial conflict with the United States than from the difficulty of reconciling political control over neighboring countries with their dependence on world markets. Schüller defends multilateral trade while criticizing concessions and institutional arrangements that weaken its practical operation.

The first section dismantles the assumption that competing doctrines necessarily produce bilateral conflict. Russia needs American machinery, supplies relatively few important exports in return, and has no evident interest in overturning this relationship. The difficulty instead concerns reciprocity between economies governed by tariffs and a state trading monopoly. Foreign tariff reductions benefit Soviet exports, but Soviet tariff concessions offer little assurance of market access: the monopoly can restrict purchases without issuing formal restrictions.

But the Russian monopoly can offer no reciprocal provisions; in the first place, Russian tariff levels are of no importance to the countries exporting to Russia, and in the second, the Russian monopoly can, without publishing any trade curbs, restrict imports or discriminate among countries simply by not buying certain commodities or by not buying from certain countries.

Schüller therefore questions the charter’s proposed substitutes for conventional reciprocity: collective purchasing guarantees, negotiated trading margins, and promises that state enterprises will act only on commercial considerations. Aggregate purchase commitments cannot secure particular countries an expanded market, while the motives behind monopoly decisions cannot effectively be verified. Soviet hostility must consequently be explained through relations with third countries, rather than through disadvantages imposed on Russia itself.

The second section locates the more immediate resistance to American policy in Britain and other economies weakened by war. The American program combines international monetary, investment, and trade institutions with reduced, nondiscriminatory tariffs and the abolition of other trade restrictions. Its opponents regard exchange controls, quotas, and preferential arrangements as instruments of recovery and economic planning; they also fear exposure to American depressions. Keynes occupies a mediating position, accepting freer trade as indispensable to Britain while securing transitional safeguards through monetary arrangements, the Anglo-American loan, and concessions on quantitative restrictions.

The whole concept of combating balance of payment disequilibrium by quotas seems to me to be erroneous; moreover, in view of the efficient safety valves which have already been set up in the machinery of postwar trade policy, such measures should not be necessary.

For Schüller, exceptions allowing import quotas threaten to undo the principle they qualify. Nevertheless, he recognizes that concessions may be necessary to obtain agreement and hopes international supervision will limit their damage. Against predictions of British economic collapse, he cites improving exports and a smaller trade deficit in 1946 than pessimists anticipated. He does not deny Britain’s difficulties; he challenges the inference that they require a closed sterling bloc. Nor can a bilateral deficit with the United States establish the failure of a system whose purpose is precisely to make bilateral balancing unnecessary.

Indeed, England could never pay for her imports from the United States by direct exports, and this is precisely the argument in favor of multilateral trade.

The third section extends this reasoning to the projected ruble bloc. Schüller interprets Soviet attacks on equal trading opportunities as an effort to reinforce political influence through preferential economic ties. Yet nationalized industries and state purchasing agencies already limit the applicability of most-favored-nation treatment. The deeper obstacle to regional integration is the composition of trade itself: Soviet neighbors cannot obtain all necessary imports within the bloc or sell enough of their exports there. Czechoslovakia’s predominantly westward exports illustrate the limits of administrative attempts to redirect commerce.

Thus Russia's criticism of the United States trade policy is the expression of her own discontent with the dependence of her neighbors on world trade.

This formulation shifts the argument from ideology to economic dependence. Schüller also resists treating commercial ties as automatic determinants of political allegiance, citing countries within Germany’s economic orbit that remained neutral or fought against it. His discussion of the Danube similarly distinguishes understandable Soviet resentment over earlier exclusion from international commissions from the actual commercial significance of equal treatment for shipping. Soviet acquisition of shipping interests may strengthen its regional position, but that is a separate issue from nondiscrimination. Cutting neighboring countries off from wider markets would impose responsibilities on Russia rather than eliminate their economic needs.

The concluding section traces successive revisions of the trade charter and judges the program as a workable compromise, supported by monetary institutions, reconstruction finance, American credit, and existing trade agreements. Schüller objects, however, to a charter that tries to anticipate every negotiating contingency.

I hope, therefore, that the draft will eventually revert to the simpler forms of the Proposals.

His preference for simpler rules reflects confidence in negotiation and reciprocal practice rather than exhaustive institutional prescription. The article’s relevance lies in its account of the tensions within postwar multilateralism: nondiscrimination can coexist uneasily with state monopolies, emergency safeguards can undermine liberalization, and political blocs remain constrained by their members’ trading needs. Schüller’s optimism about agreement is qualified by these tensions, but his governing claim remains that economic recovery favors wider commercial cooperation over exclusive regional systems.