Who was Cordell Hull?

Cordell Hull was FDR's Secretary of State for twelve years.  No one has served in that post longer.  For some people he's a figure of fun, but others remember him for at least one, very special, achievement...

Hull is certainly a figure of fun for FDR's recent biographer,  Conrad Black,

• Hull's chief foreign policy preoccupation was an obsession with reducing tariffs, which he considered a panacea....  A number of Hull's Senate colleagues, hearing of this possibility [that Hull would be nominated for Secretary of State - Ben] , advised Roosevelt . . . that Hull was not up to the post.  Roosevelt was well aware of Hull's shortcomings . . . and had no interest in having a particularly brilliant person as Secretary of State...(260) 
• According to Louis Howe's son . . . Hull was known to the conference [the World Monetary and Economic Conference in London in 1934 - Ben] as "Miss Cordelia Dull... while he [Roosevelt - Ben] had little regard for Hull as secretary of state...(300) 
• Another prominent cabinet member who was a slight disappointment to Roosevelt was the secretary of state, Cordell Hull.  Gloomy, sanctimonious, and unimaginative...(337)
• He [Roosevelt - Ben] ruled out Hull [as presidential material - Ben] for age (not to mention boredom)...(443) 
• A plan was worked out, including restraints on trade with Germany and Italy, but Cordell Hull, who fussed at all times, was dismayed at the effect this might have on his ruling passion of free trade, which was becoming a rather esoteric concern...(463)
• Hull's sanctimonious inflexibility...The secretary of state...did not seem to grasp...he doesn't seem to have understood...(669) 
• ...Hull, who had a slight speech impediment when pronouncing the letter "r," which usually emerged as "w," caused Roosevelt to say to Francis Perkins in an aside: "If Cordell says 'Oh Chwist' again, I'm going to scream. . . . I can't stand profanity with a lisp." (672) 
• Hull was even more tired, boring, and unimaginative than ever...(998)

(Franklin Delano Roosevelt.  Champion of Freedom ).  Black does point out that Roosevelt valued Hull's high standing with Congress.

Historian Robert Dallek isn't so hard on Hull (Franklin D. Roosevelt and American Foreign Policy, 1932-1945):

...As a Tennessee Congressman and Senator for twenty-three years, the sixty-two-year-old Hull had established a reputation as a fervent believer in economic internationalism or, more precisely, in world economic improvement through tariff reform. "Gentle" and "frail," with a slight lisp, Hull gave "the appearance of a benign southern gentleman of the old school."  But his "air of harmless benevolence" masked a vindictive evangelism which he put at the service of economic internationalism.  The protective tariff, he said, was the "king of evils," the breeder of economic wars, and "the largest single underlying cause of the present panic."  "We must eliminate these twade baa-yuhs heah, theah, and ev'ywheah," the unconverted mimicked him.  In December 1932 he had gone on record as calling for recovery through world economic disarmament.  He outlined a program in which "a truce on further increases in tariffs and similar trade obstructions" and "a horizontal reduction of 10 per cent in all permanent tariff rates of all countries" were preliminary steps to the gradual reduction of trade barriers through reciprocal agreements.  Such a program, he believed, could be set in motion through discussions at a world economic conference on tariffs, monetary rehabilitation, credit policy, and general economic disarmament.  Though his long-term support of FDR and his high standing with party regulars, particularly in the South and in Congress, made Hull an attractive candidate for the senior Cabinet appointment in any case, his internationalism was a highly important consideration in his behalf."

Kenneth Dam of the University of Chicago takes him very seriously indeed ("Cordell Hull, The Reciprocal Trade Agreement Act, and the WTO "):

Hull had many accomplishments. But the reason Hull is remembered today is not that he was an original author of the U.S. income and estate tax laws. Nor is he is given the credit he deserves for his role as Secretary of State in World War II, helping to thwart Treasury Secretary Morgenthau'™s post-war plans for returning Germany to an agrarian society. Nor is he primarily remembered because - ”as Secretary of State in charge of post-war planning - ”he merited President Roosevelt'™s view of him as "œthe Father of the United Nations."

Hull is really remembered today, Dam says, for the Reciprocal Trade Agreements Act (RTAA) of 1934:

Rather remarkably, in an era when war and peace rank higher in public attention than international trade policy, he is best known today for the key strategic concepts that underlay the Reciprocal Trade Agreements Act of 1934 and that became the motive forces behind the GATT and WTO. Today we can see all of the benefits that trade liberalization has brought in worldwide prosperity in the last half of the 20th century. It is true that the 1934 Act provided only for bilateral agreements, but it furnished the template for Congressional advance authorization for Executive Branch negotiation of trade agreements that has been so important for those post-war accomplishments and for the trade issues that the world is dealing with today.

In the U.S., Congress is responsible for setting tariffs and regulating trade with foreign nations.   The President negotiates with foreign countries.  Trade agreements are complicated, involving all sorts of delicately balanced tradeoffs.  Before the RTAA trade treaties were subject to amendment and approval by the Senate (and two-thirds of the Senators had to approve a treaty).   Under these circumstances, the President lacked credibility in trade negotiations.

Moreover, from the start of the Civil War, until the early 1930s, trade policy in Congress was the plaything of import-competing industries.  Periodic tariff bills would be shaped by logrolling between Congressmen representing different import-competing communities.  Except for the period of the First World War, tariffs were high throughout this period.  The whole circus culminated in the infamous Smoot Hawley tariff of 1930.

The RTAA changed the dynamics.  The act let the President negotiate bilateral trade agreements with individual foreign countries:

• "The president was authorized to enter into tariff agreements with foreign countries."
• "The president could proclaim an increase or decrease in import duties by no more than 50 percent, but could not transfer any article between the dutiable and free lists, as a result of such agreements."
• The proclaimed duties would apply to imports from all countries on an unconditional most-favored nation (MFN) basis."
• "The president's authority to enter into foreign trade agreements would expire in three years."
• "The United States could terminate any agreement after three years with six months' notice; otherwise it would stay in effect indefinitely."

(Free Trade Under Fire by Douglas Irwin of Dartmouth).

Irwin points out that the RTAA changed the balance of power in trade politics:

• Trade votes in Congress now addressed whether or not to renew the RTAA negotiating authority; "Vote trading among interests that favored various tariffs was no longer feasible... the RTAA reduced access to legislative mechanisms that supported redistributive bargains and logrolling coalitions that had led to high tariffs."
• The President, who represented a broad-based constituency and was therefore likely to favor more moderate tariffs than Congress" (where representatives were each responsive to more "parochial" interests) acquired the initiative in trade negotiations.
• Renewal of the RTAA only required a simple majority in Congress - as opposed to the two-thirds of the Senate formerly required for a trade treaty.
• Moreover, tariffs were set in a process of negotiation with other countries - reductions in U.S. tariffs were the price to be paid for reductions in tariff barriers in other countries.  U.S. export interests could be engaged in support of those negotiations, offsetting the power of import-competing interests.

This legislation changed the "game" and provided a framework for trade liberalization.  The framework has evolved, but echos of it can still be seen today in the way the U.S. carries out trade negotiations.  Today, trade barriers are far lower than they once were, and the RTAA played a big role in that.

Cordell Hull fought hard for this legislation.  He fought hard against opponents within the administration, he fought hard against Roosevelt's indifference, he fought hard in Congress, and then he fought hard within the administration to determine how the act would be interpreted and implemented.