Politics & Power Quote by Henry A. Wallace

Wallace is doing something impolitic for a wartime vice president: naming a domestic culprit. The line refuses the comforting story that foreign rivals are the main threat. Instead, he points a finger at American chemical and manufacturing firms willing to cede Latin American markets to Germany so long as they can preserve the sweeter prize at home: protected pricing power over U.S. consumers.

The intent is prosecutorial. “Ready to let” makes the surrender sound casual, even opportunistic, as if national strategy can be bartered away in a boardroom. The verb choice turns geopolitical influence into a commodity. Latin America isn’t treated as a theater of partnership or shared development; it’s a market, and Wallace’s outrage hinges on how lightly American industry treats that terrain when it conflicts with domestic profit.

The subtext is anti-monopoly populism, one of Wallace’s signatures. He’s not merely arguing for export competitiveness; he’s alleging a rigged bargain: tolerate German penetration abroad if it helps maintain cartel-like arrangements at home. “Work out an arrangement” is the euphemism doing heavy lifting, implying collusion without saying “conspiracy.” The punch line is “charge high prices,” which reframes patriotic rhetoric as cover for rent-seeking.

Context matters: early 1940s anxiety over Nazi economic influence in Latin America, and New Deal fights against concentrated corporate power. Wallace fuses the two, warning that national security can be undermined not only by enemies overseas but by complacent, self-interested capitalism at home. The rhetorical move is bracing: he treats consumer prices as a barometer of democracy, and foreign markets as a test of whether American business actually believes its own talk about freedom.