For better or worse, the school where I got my master’s degree essentially invented the ways United States companies work with the rest of the world.
The better part is that prior to World War II, we were rank amateurs when dealing with furriners. Rubes. Not only were we isolationists — the other fellows often ate our lunch.
Or had us pay for their lunch, at least, which, being strange and wonderful and not just a baloney sandwich, had the benefit of tasting really, really good. And so they took friendly advantage.
But, thanks to what was founded as the American Institute of Foreign Trade just outside of Phoenix in 1946, we got better at the game — the diplomacy, the cultural friendships, the commerce — and consequently everyone thrived.
The for-worse part is that while we properly lowered tariffs and began to live, capitalism-wise, the AIFT mantra — countries should produce what they do best, and let other countries produce the other stuff, which we will buy, as they buy from us — there were consequences, not all of them good. And the worst consequences should have been more expected by those of us in the free-trade church than they were.
The guys — at first it was all guys — who went to AIFT were known as Thunderbirds, after the air base in Glendale, Arizona that Army Air Force Lt. Gen. Barton Kyle Yount bought from the government for a dollar immediately after the war with the promise it be turned into a school to train Americans to do business with the rest of the world. Yount had seen overseas that “the young men who were going to foreign countries to represent American business were, in many cases, entirely untrained and unfit to represent their firms and their government.” He also was determined to force overseas Yanks out of their monolingualism, and it was the first American business school with a foreign language requirement.
In my desert days, the school was known as the American Graduate School of International Management. Now, as part of Arizona State University’s downtown Phoenix campus, it’s the Thunderbird School of Global Management.
But, for almost 75 years, the philosophy has been the same: the United States, big as we are, is part of the world. The world works best when each part of it plays to its strengths. Before WWII, sure, we imported a few things — coffee. The odd bottle of Champagne. Not much else. After … well, I will always remember when my grandfather returned from a goodwill visit to Pasadena’s sister city, Mishima, Japan, in the late 1950s with a tiny Sony transistor radio. We didn’t make them. The Japanese did. The trade that developed between Japan and the rest of the world in electronics and autos lifted all boats.
World trade-wise, Japan was one thing. China was another. Once diplomatic relations were restored, it wasn’t a matter of a nation that made excellent televisions and Toyotas in exchange for our dollars. China was large enough to make everything. And soon it did. T-birds made deals and the trade flowed.
In theory, this was still good, except for that overabundance of plastic things in your yard. Free-trade economists noted that American jobs were still very much produced by import businesses, and at our ports.
But we went circa 1980 from realizing that we didn’t have to make everything to the question properly being asked now, when we didn’t do a very good job of manufacturing masks for the pandemic — can we make anything? Then there’s the greenhouse-gas issue involved when Americans suddenly decide to drink water from Fiji.
I’m still a free-trader. But let’s not permanently forget as a nation how to be makers.
Larry Wilson is on the Southern California News Group editorial board. lwilson@scng.com.