In 1975, C. Fred Bergsten, an expert on international finance, wrote The Dilemmas of the Dollar. Bergsten discussed the post-1945 monetary system and floating exchange rates, but he focused on the weak dollar, which was contributing to inflation and a poor economy. Economic policy failure by Presidents Lyndon Johnson, Richard Nixon, and Gerald Ford, as well as the Federal Reserve, had caused a collapse in the dollar.
Though a leap to global free trade is a nice idea, the political support is just not there. Nor is any such earthshaking step necessary. The World Trade Organization has an extensive built-in agenda that should not be derailed. Fears of regionalism are greatly exaggerated, since regional trade has not increased much since the early 1970s and current plans for free trade in the Americas and the Pacific are unlikely to succeed. Few countries share the free-trade faith of the United States and Great Britain, and even in those places, economic anxiety threatens to push trade in the other direction.