“Domestic in Every Place, Foreign in None”: Corporate Futurism, Multinational Corporations, and the Politics of International Trade in the Early 1970s

Abstract

This article documents how business lobbying groups, corporate leaders, and even some members of the Nixon administration drew on futurist discourse and rhetoric to defeat the Burke-Hartke bill, proposed legislation that would have imposed new taxes on multinational corporations. For several years, self-described futurologists had reconceptualized multinational corporations as ideal institutions for securing world peace and, more broadly, meeting society’s needs, thereby taking over some of the government’s functions. These ideas allowed business interests to invoke a utopian vision of the multinational corporation while working toward the more concrete goal of building a global economy defined by free trade and fending off unwanted regulation.