dollar diplomacy

dollar diplomacy
1. a government policy of promoting the business interests of its citizens in other countries.
2. diplomacy or foreign relations strengthened by the power of a nation's financial resources.
[1905-10, Amer.]

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U.S. foreign policy created by Pres.

William H. Taft to ensure financial stability in a region in exchange for favourable treatment of U.S. commercial interests.The policy grew out of Pres. Theodore Roosevelt's peaceful intervention in the Dominican Republic, where U.S. loans had been exchanged for the right to choose the head of customs (the country's major revenue source). Taft's secretary of state, Philander Knox carried out Dollar Diplomacy in Central America (1909) and China (1910). Pres. Woodrow Wilson repudiated the policy in 1913. The term has become a disparaging reference to the manipulation of foreign affairs for economic ends.

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▪ United States government policy
 foreign policy created by U.S. president William Howard Taft (Taft, William Howard) (served 1909–13) and his secretary of state, Philander C. Knox (Knox, Philander Chase), to ensure the financial stability of a region while protecting and extending American commercial and financial interests there. It grew out of President Theodore Roosevelt's peaceful intervention in the Dominican Republic, where U.S. loans had been exchanged for the right to choose the Dominican head of customs (the country's major revenue source).

      Under the name of Dollar Diplomacy the Taft administration engineered such a policy in Nicaragua. It supported the overthrow of José Santos Zelaya and set up Adolfo Díaz in his place, it established a collector of customs, and it guaranteed loans to the Nicaraguan government. The resentment of the Nicaraguan people, however, eventually resulted in U.S. military intervention as well.

      Taft and Knox also attempted to promulgate Dollar Diplomacy in China, where it was even less successful, both in terms of U.S. ability to supply loans and in terms of world reaction. The dismal failure of Dollar Diplomacy—from its simplistic assessment of social unrest to its formulaic application—caused the Taft administration to finally abandon the policy in 1912. The following year President Woodrow Wilson (Wilson, Woodrow) publicly repudiated Dollar Diplomacy, though he acted as vigorously as had his predecessors to maintain U.S. supremacy in Central America and the Caribbean.

      Dollar diplomacy has come to refer in a disparaging way to the heedless manipulation of foreign affairs for strictly monetary ends.

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Universalium. 2010.

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