World War II was the turning point of the 20th Century in a lot of ways, but economically it brought to the fore the dominance of the United States. Even the most affluent and powerful nations were unable to keep pace with the growth of the US, and many resorted to tariffs and other means to counteract this trend.

If one was present in any of those countries at the time, perhaps one would have heard “Buy UK” or “Buy French” as refrains similar to our own website title. Perhaps the nations saw jobs disappearing, land and resources sold off, and locally-made goods unable to be offered at competitive prices. Whatever the case, the International Monetary Fund and progenitor of the World Bank were set up, with the United States anchoring the world’s major economic system.

This lasted for about two decades, at which point the other nations of the world were stable and prosperous enough to match the US presence, or (in the case of the USSR) challenge it. Cold War necessities began to reverse the surplus that the US had previously enjoyed, and the international market was no longer tilted in its favor. Beginning in the early 1970s, the US began to see a cycle of economic fluctuations that largely mitigated the previous economic supremacy, as well as creating serious (though most often temporary) economic crises.

The introduction of “supply-side” (or “trickle-down”) economics, associated with the 1980s, was hailed (then and since) as a return to the power of US economy. However, anyone who lived at that time will have no difficulty remembering that it was also a time of unemployment from “outsourcing” (before that particular buzzword was widely used) to other countries. The flashy and doomed successes of the “yuppie” aside, the US was not a prosperous nation — and it was at this time that the “Buy American” campaign began to seem less like ‘protectionism’ and more like common sense…to some.