The Bell Trade Act Of 1946 4n5m1x

The Bell Trade Act of 1946, also known as the Philippine Trade Act was an act ed by the United States Congress specifying the economic conditions governing the independence of the Philippines from the United States. The United States Congress offered $800 million for post World War II rebuilding funds if the Bell Trade Act was ratified by Philippine legislature, which duly approved the measure on July 2, two days before independence from the United States of America ] According to Filipino nationalists, the Bell Trade Act had provisions that tied the Philippine economy to the United States economy: 

The Philippine currency, the peso, was to be pegged to the US dollar.

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The Bell Trade Act required that the Philippine constitution be revised to grant U.S. citizens and corporations equal access to Philippine minerals, forests and other natural resources.

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The Bell Act stipulated that free trade be continued until 1954; thereafter, tariffs would be increased 5 percent annually until full amounts were reached in 1974.

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This act allowed the U.S. to import whatever products/goods it wanted with no import duties.

The parity clause required an amendment relating to the 1935 Philippine Constitution's thirteenth article, which reserved the use of natural resources for Filipinos. Filipino nationalists denounced the Bell Trade Act. Even the reliably pro-American Philippine President Sergio Osmena called it a "curtailment of Philippine sovereignty, virtual nullification of Philippine independence." Since the Bell Trade Act was unpopular to Filipino nationalists, a revised United States-Philippine Trade Agreement (the LaurelLangley Agreement) was negotiated to replace Bell Act. This treaty abolished the United States authority to control the exchange rate of the peso, made parity privileges reciprocal, extended the sugar quota, and extended the time period for the reduction of other quotas and for the progressive application of tariffs on Philippine goods exported to the United States.

Laurel-Langley Agreement A trade agreement between the Philippines and the United States, signed in 1955 and expired in 1974, whereby Americans were given some of the same rights as Filipinos within the Philippines.

Open Door Policy was a foreign policy initiative enunciated formally by Secretary of State John Hay in his Open Door notes of 1899 and 1900. The first note was issued on 6 September 1899 to Great Britain, , and Russia, with notes following to Japan, , and Italy. The initial note requested that the various governments ensure that equal commercial opportunity be allowed and that no nation with a sphere of influence use that power to benefit its own nationals. Although Hay's initial note did not receive unqualified and complete , the secretary of state followed it up with a second note on 20 March 1900 that asserted that all nations had assented. With these statements, the United States formally declared its intentions to American commercial interests in China. The American idea of the open door was constituted by three interrelated doctrines: equality of commercial opportunity, territorial integrity, and istrative integrity. The Open Door policy emerged from two major cycles of American expansionist history. The first, a maritime cycle, gained impetus from the new commercial thrust of the mid-nineteenth century and blended into the new cycle of industrial and financial capitalism that emerged toward the end of the century and continued into the 1930s. Thereafter, its vitality ebbed away as political and economic forces posed a new power structure and national reorganization in the Far East.