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Named after U.S. Secretary of State George Marshall; in 1947 he proposed that the United States provide economic and military aid to recovering European nations, requiring only that all participating nations exchange economic information and work to reduce trade barriers. The Soviet Union, the U.S.'s former ally, denounced these conditions as attempts to reshape Europe in an American-style free market under American control,
and ordered its Eastern European allies not to participate. While the U.S. poured $13 billion into the European recovery effort, the Marshall Plan became one more step into a Cold War, and support for it became one more political litmus test for "loyal" American trade unions in 1948.
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