Foreign trade policy as a tool of post-war reconstruction: from the experience of countries participating in the Marshall Plan

Abstract

The Russian-Ukrainian war is a serious test for the national economy and society, which requires a review of the institutional mechanisms for economic system development. Both in the active phase of the war and in the post-war reconstruction period, keeping the Ukrainian economy afloat and its gradual recovery is impossible without further integration into the international market and intensive economic cooperation, which actualizes the role of foreign trade policy. Because of this, it is necessary to refer to positive historical practice in identifying the most optimal measures and instruments of state influence in foreign economic relations. The purpose of the research is to justify the role of foreign trade policy as an instrument for the post-war reconstruction of the European economies included in the Marshall Plan. The theoretical basis of the conducted research is both the classical concepts of foreign trade interaction and the theory of new economic thought. The methodological basis is systemic, problem-logical, comparative, and statistical analyses. The features of the post-war economic development of the countries included in the Marshall Plan were revealed. It was determined the formation of high food, industrial, and technical dependence on imports, a low level of national production and exports, negative trade and payment balances, financial and currency destabilization, etc. It was revealed that direct government support for national production and foreign trade policy, implemented through customs and tariff concessions and non-tariff instruments (state purchases, subsidizing production and exports, currency devaluation, the system of bilateral trade agreements, etc.) played an important role in the post-war economic transformation of European countries. It is substantiated that the applied institutional levers of state influence led to gradual progressive changes in the structure of domestic production, which, in combination with a mutually beneficial system of integration and trade relations, contributed to the economic recovery of the countries included in the Marshall Plan and ensured the strengthening of their competitive positions on international markets as producers of industrial and technological products.