March 14, 1996 Contact: Barbara McKenna (408) 459-2495; mckenna@ua.ucsc.edu

PATRICK BUCHANAN'S PROTECTIONIST POLICIES JUST THE LATEST IN THE LONG-STANDING 'BUY AMERICAN' LEGACY

UC Santa Cruz historian examines the long history of the 'Buy American' movement and economic nationalism in America

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

SANTA CRUZ, CA--The protectionist trade policies so central to the platform of presidential hopeful Patrick Buchanan have appealed to countless politicians before him. In fact, the concept is as old as the United States itself. An early expression of economic nationalism, still popular today, is the 'Buy American' campaign. According to historian Dana Frank, "This country was born with a 'Buy American' campaign--the Boston Tea Party--when colonists protested British imports."

Frank, an associate professor of American studies at the University of California, Santa Cruz, is writing a book on the history of "Buy American" campaigns and economic nationalism in the U.S. She recently received a $30,000 grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities' Fellowships for College and University Teachers program to work on her book, due to be completed next year.

From the Boston Tea Party to the Great Depression to the present, Frank's book examines the ebb and flow of "Buy American" campaigns and popular economic nationalism.

"Buy American sentiment has continued to come in and out of vogue in the U.S. over the past two centuries, often initiated by sectors of the economy with an interest in high tariffs," Frank notes. "Others turned to Buy American campaigns as part of scapegoating hostility toward immigrants and foreign workers. That sentiment reached extreme levels in the 1970s when autoworkers in Detroit smashed Japanese cars in frustration at their treatment by U.S. automakers."

According to Frank, economic nationalism enjoyed widespread popularity in the 1930s, climaxing with the Buy American Act of 1933. Economic nationalism was adopted during that era for divergent reasons. African Americans launched campaigns that urged, "Don't buy where you can't work"; Chinese American campaigns boycotted Japanese goods and promoted American products in response to Japanese aggression in China; and, during World War II, popular boycotts of Japanese and Nazi products were widespread. -more- Buy American 2-2-2

Frank identifies the 1970s to the present as the next period of popularity for Buy American agitation. "That's when strong trade union-based 'Buy American' campaigns emerged, as well as campaigns by national-level organizations such as Crafted With Pride in U.S.A., Inc.," she notes. "Political campaigns at the federal and state level were promoting the passage of laws requiring domestic purchases in government procurement." Currently, Frank says, "Popular debate on Buy American campaigns has reached new levels of complexity in arguments over NAFTA and GATT."

Frank is the author of Purchasing Power: Consumer Organizing, Gender, and the Seattle Labor Movement, 1919-1929 (Cambridge, England, and New York: Cambridge University Press, 1994), which won the Western History Association's W. Turrentine Jackson Prize.

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