EH.N: ANN: Hagley Museum and Library Opens the Records of the National Foreign Trade Council

[Janet Hilyard]

Hagley is pleased to announce that the records of the National 
Foreign Trade Council are open for research. The Council is the 
country's leading trade association concerned with issues affecting 
all aspects of international trade. The records, measuring 183 linear 
feet, span the years from 1918 to 1982; the bulk of the material 
dates from the post-World War II era.

The National Foreign Trade Council was formed at the first National 
Foreign Trade Convention, in Washington, D.C., in May 1914. In its 
early years, the Council concentrated on running the annual 
convention and serving as an intermediary in commercial negotiations 
between U.S. interests and their trading partners in the Caribbean 
and Latin America. The Council was incorporated in New York State in 
1936 and hired a permanent staff, allowing it to enlarge the scope of 
its activities.

The Council is composed of representatives of major U.S. corporations 
engaged in international trade. In addition to its permanent staff, 
it conducts business through a number of topically and 
regionally-focused committees. The Council has consistently espoused 
free-trade principles and works through the annual National Foreign 
Trade Convention, informal meetings, publications, and testimony 
before national and international governing bodies.

While the Council's pre-1945 records are largely limited to its own 
publications and copies of trade treaties, the records now being 
opened provide an important source for understanding the role of 
business in most of the important international trade issues of the 
late twentieth century. Major topics include the construction of the 
post-war world economic order, the growth of the United Nations and 
the European Economic Community, the regulation and taxation of 
international trade and investment, the Law of the Sea Treaty, 
government response to the growth of multinational corporations, 
expropriation without compensation, economic boycotts, and the 
growing shift of U.S. trade from the Atlantic to the Pacific Rim. 
Additional records, still closed, will eventually carry these stories 
into the 1990s. More detailed descriptions of the records are 
available in Hagley's online public catalog.

The records of the National Foreign Trade Council join those of the 
Conference Board, the National Association of Manufacturers, and the 
Chamber of Commerce of the United States and significantly augment 
Hagley's well-established ability to serve researchers interested in 
issues at the intersection of business and politics.

If you have questions about this collection, please contact our 
reference archivist Marge McNinch, Manuscripts and Archives 
Department, at (302) 658-2400, ext. 330 or by email at 
mmcninch at hagley.org