Tag Archives: buy american

Stacy Summary:  Very interesting study.

• Slate:  How the CIA Got the World to Buy American

How did the CIA persuade these friendly governments to “Buy American”? A pair of additional analyses in the study provide some answers. First, the researchers find that the boost to imports came from CIA operations that helped to install or maintain U.S.-friendly dictatorships—it seems that the will of the people in democracies was effective in counteracting CIA influence. So U.S. exports didn’t benefit from “softer” interventions like the ones in postwar Japan or failed attempts at regime change, as in Syria, for example. (This may explain why CIA operations so often promoted dictatorships at the expense of democracy, a finding that a subset of the same authors report in a separate study.) Further, the authors report that the CIA-produced increase in U.S. imports is greatest for countries with government-dominated economies. It’s not that dictators were foisting U.S. toasters or microwaves on their people. Rather, U.S. interests were served primarily through the export of American-made power plants, fighter planes, and other government purchases.