Lesson plan
Commercial Import Program
The Commercial Import Program, sometimes known as the Commodity Import Program (CIP), was an economic aid arrangement between South Vietnam and its main supporter, the United States. It lasted from January 1955 until the Fall of Saigon in 1975 and the dissolution of South Vietnam following the invasion by North Vietnam after US forces had withdrawn from the country due to the 1973 cease-fire agreement. The initiative was a trading plan that was designed to inject large amounts of American capital into the South Vietnamese economy to help fuel its industrialization, growth and self-sufficiency, without incurring the high levels of inflation that would normally occur in such a drastic injection of money. The CIP was a scheme whereby US dollars were given to the South Vietnamese government treasury. Selected businesspeople were given import licenses that allowed them to purchase US dollars with South Vietnamese currency at a rate far below the market value. The importers then used their American currency to buy US goods, while the Saigon government kept the South Vietnamese currency paid by the businessmen to fund the military and public service. The objective of the mechanism was to inject large amounts of money into the economy in an indirect way, through material goods, so that inflation would be avoided.…
Article summary
The Commercial Import Program, sometimes known as the Commodity Import Program (CIP), was an economic aid arrangement between South Vietnam and its main supporter, the United States. It lasted from January 1955 until the Fall of Saigon in 1975 and the dissolution of South Vietnam following the invasion by North Vietnam after US forces had withdrawn from the country due to the 1973 cease-fire agreement. The initiative was a trading plan that was designed to inject large amounts of American capital into the South Vietnamese economy to help fuel its industrialization, growth and self-sufficiency, without incurring the high levels of inflation that would normally occur in such a drastic injection of money. The CIP was a scheme whereby US dollars were given to the South Vietnamese government treasury. Selected businesspeople were given import licenses that allowed them to purchase US dollars with South Vietnamese currency at a rate far below the market value. The importers then used their American currency to buy US goods, while the Saigon government kept the South Vietnamese currency paid by the businessmen to fund the military and public service. The objective of the mechanism was to inject large amounts of money into the economy in an indirect way, through material goods, so that inflation would be avoided.…
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Discussion questions
- Summarise the article in your own words. Which single claim would you verify first, and why?
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- If two sources disagreed about one of these facts, what would you need in order to trust one over the other?
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