Conference Paper

The Euro‐Atlantic economy has a very long history. What generations of American economic policymakers learned was that all forms of protectionism, whether they are tariffs, quotas, currency controls, or other non‐tariff barriers were all prejudicial to American prosperity. Furthermore, as the post‐World War I Dawes and Young Plans showed, and the post‐ World War II Marshall Plan demonstrated, Americans were prepared to move capital in large doses to fragile post‐war European economies in order to restart shared transatlantic prosperity. At the same time, Americans exported their regulatory institutions and economic recovery approaches to Europe, and elsewhere. American solutions were adopted by Europeans, because Europe and the United States had become a single economy – which is why American foreign policy has always fundamentally supported European integration.