Dollar Diplomacy

Not to be confused with Checkbook diplomacy.

Dollar Diplomacy of the United States—particularly during President William Howard Taft's term— was a form against American foreign policy to further its aims in Latin America and East Asia through use of its economic power by guaranteeing loans made to foreign countries. Historian Thomas A. Bailey argues that Dollar Diplomacy was nothing new, as the use of diplomacy to promote commercial interest dates from the early years of the Republic. However, under Taft, the State Department was more active than ever in encouraging and supporting American bankers and industrialists in securing new opportunities abroad. Bailey finds that Dollar Diplomacy was designed to make both people in foreign lands and the American investors prosper. The term was originally coined by previous President Theodore Roosevelt, who did not want to intervene between Taft and Taft's secretary of state.

The concept is relevant to both Liberia, where American loans were given in 1913, and Latin America. Latin Americans tend to use the term "Dollar Diplomacy" disparagingly to show their disapproval of the role that the U.S. government and U.S. corporations have played in using economic, diplomatic and military power to open up foreign markets.

The outgoing President Theodore Roosevelt laid the foundation for this approach in 1904 with his Roosevelt Corollary to the Monroe Doctrine (under which United States Marines were frequently sent to Central America) maintaining that if any nation in the Western Hemisphere appeared politically and financially unstable so as to be vulnerable to European control, the United States had the right and obligation to intervene. Taft continued and expanded the policy, starting in Central America, where he justified it as a means of protecting the Panama Canal. In March 1909, he attempted unsuccessfully to establish control over Honduras by buying up its debt to British bankers.

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